


Someone Like Me, Someone Like You

by Reikah



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: A Lot Of Meet-Cutes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Compliant, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, M/M, Meet-Cute, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2018-10-23 17:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 20,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10723656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reikah/pseuds/Reikah
Summary: "Ten years, a hundred years from now -"A collection of short unrelated M!Hawke/Anders stories from my tumblr, written in response to prompts and requests; no character death, table of contents in chapter one.





	1. Table of Contents

**Author's Note:**

> A collection of m!handers or m!handers pre-slash ficlets cross-posted from [my tumblr](http://fauxfires.tumblr.com) \- some AU, some canon, some serious, some ridiculous - but honestly, mostly romantic. For a weird value of romance. Er. 
> 
> See Chapter One for a table of contents. Have fun!

Chapter One: Table Of Contents (You Are Here)

Chapter Two: "The Curious Case (Study) Of The Chundering Canine" (Modern!AU, Vet!Anders, SFW)

Chapter Three: "The war is over, and we are beginning" (Canon-compliant, Post-DA2, art prompt)

Chapter Four: "Crossroads" (Modern!AU, art prompt)

Chapter Five: "Hail Caesar" (Canon divergent, Champion!Anders)

Chapter Six: "Live By The Sword" (Canon-compliant, DA:A Anders)

Chapter Seven: "Decoding Hawke" (Canon-compliant, tongue-tied Hawke)

Chapter Eight: "Mistaken Identity" (Canon-compliant, post-DA2, disguises)

Chapter Nine: "Blue Skies" (Temeraire/His Majesty's Dragon-DA2 fusion)

Chapter Ten: "Vengeance Is A Dish Best Served Petty" (Canon-compliant (...ish), Hawke vs Knight-Commander)

Chapter Eleven: "Photogenic" (Modern!AU, art prompt)

Chapter Twelve: "A Storm of Righteous Thunder" (Canon-compliant, Varric's questionable writing)

Chapter Thirteen: "A Match Made in Heaven" (Modern!AU, meet.... cute?)

Chapter Fourteen: "The Last Resort of Good Men" (Canon-compliant, custom Hawke)

Chapter Fifteen: "Cut Loose" (Post-game, custom Hawke)

Chapter Sixteen: "Heartsong" (Post-game, custom Hawke)

Chapter Seventeen: "Hearth and Home" (Canon-compliant, Act 2)

Chapter Eighteen: "Armoire" (Slight canon divergence)

Chapter Nineteen: "Gathering Down" (Canon-compliant, pre-slash, in between Acts 1 and 2)

[TBU!]


	2. The Curious Case...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The Curious Case (Study) Of The Chundering Canine" - Modern AU!, Vet!Anders. SFW!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt shared on the DA Prompt Exchange tumblr, which was as follows: "Veterinarian Anders has a new patient - a mabari called Dog, owned by a bear of a man. Dog swallowed something he shouldn't have and Anders feels like he swallowed his heart."

CASE STUDY: a collection of notes on the treatment of a patient presenting with chronic intermittent vomiting by DR ANDERS H., B.Vet-Med, MTCVS.

Patient History for ‘Dog’ Hawke, CANINE, MABARI, TAN M (NEUTERED), 4 y 6m

**24/01/9:32**

Presenting complaint: Patient presented by Mr Hawke with 3-4 month hx of v+ in household. V+ clear, usually within 2 hours after meals, and usually in same location (under dining table), however Mr Hawke works frequently long hours away from home and cannot be sure of time of vomit.  
Mr Hawke initially took Dog to Parkside Vets in Lothering, see attached clinical hx. No ddx reached.  
Mr Hawke then took Dog to Parkview Vets in Lothering, see attached clinical hx and General Health Profile + liver/kidney panel results. No ddx reached.  
Mr Hawke then took Dog to Parkhill Vets in Denerim, see attached clinical hx, Cushing’s test results, T4 results and insulin curve results.

On examination: Weight: 62kg. Bright And Responsive in consult, Heart Rate/Respiratory Rate Within Normal Limits, lung sounds clear. Dog was very excitable today and was muzzled for general exam. Mr Hawke held very well despite Dog’s considerable size. ~~Mr Hawke a weightlifter??~~ Had to swap stethoscope as accidentally fumbled mine when Mr Hawke lifted 62kg dog onto exam table by himself. ~~Definitely a weightlifter, oh Maker.~~

Dog currently fed on Royal Mabari Sensitivity following recommendation from Dr Finn Aldebrant at Parkview Vets. O has already performed food sensitivity trials and we can rule this out as a cause for V+. Dog is U.T.D on all parasite treatment however IS a scavenger. Mr Hawke usually muzzles for walks outside. Currently on steroids from Parkhill vets (?????) prednisolone 25mg sid (?????) advised to taper off and then stop. Not currently on any other meds.

Recommend booking Dog in for electrolyte blood test. Once ruled out can potentially move onto x-rays for fb obstruction, or endoscope for gastritis. Mr Hawke happy to proceed and made a joke about stethoscopes.

~~Mr Hawke very handsome.~~

**25/01/9:32**

Dog arrived nice and early for blood test. Mr Hawke provided muzzle and also coffee. ~~Good coffee~~. Weight: 62.5kg, BAR, HR/RR WNL still. Mr Hawke again held Dog for blood test, Dog more sedate and cooperative today - no further restraint necessary. ~~I’d behave too if Mr Hawke hugged me around the chest like that.~~

Mr Hawke given ETA for lab results. Updated contact telephone number. Mr Hawke gave me personal mobile number on a business card. ~~He’s a defense lawyer, he seems the type.~~

Advised Mr Hawke I would call as soon as results arrived.

**26/01/9:32**

Saw Mr Hawke in the waiting room between clients, he had brought the clinic a box of biscuits. Asked how weaning Dog off steroids was going. Mr Hawke said it was going well. Gave me another business card. ~~He winked. Fuck.~~

**27/01/9:32**

Mr Hawke called and asked to speak to me. Isabela transferred the call ~~and wouldn’t stop laughing~~. Mr Hawke concerned as Dog has vomited once under kitchen table. Advised to monitor and call if repeat occurrence. Mr Hawke thanked me for my time and mentioned poster he saw in my consult room for rock band. Assured Mr Hawke my professional attention is focused on himself and his dog.

~~Chatted for 45 minutes about music. He likes Fuck The Templars too and a bunch of other anarcho-punk bans and he’s even seen them live at the Burning Chantry festival! We were at the same protest march in Hightown last week. He spoke eloquently and passionately about the need for reforms in the criminal justice system. Fuck.~~

**28/01/9:32**

~~Mr Hawke added me on facebook. Help. Isabela still laughing.~~

Lab results are in, all WNL (see attached); phoned Mr Hawke to discuss next steps. Would like to try either endoscope biopsy of stomach tissue to rule out gastritis or x-rays to rule out FB, both if necessary. Mr Hawke keen to proceed, scheduled Dog in tomorrow.

 _DOCUMENT ATTACHED:_ BLOOD TEST DOG HAWKE.PDF

~~His name is Garrett, he likes the colour blue, and we spent my entire lunch break flirting. Are we moving too fast? What about Karl? Is this even professional? But he’s so smart, and so handsome, and when he smiles… I don’t think veterinary medicine can make that go away.~~

**29/01/9:32**

Dog weight - 62kg. PE BAR, HR/RR WNL, everything looks good; ok to proceed with g/a.

Mr Hawke gave me another business card to call if anything goes wrong with the op. He crossed out his number and wrote a different one - personal number instead of business apparently? Updated client records. ~~His smile is gorgeous.~~

Procedure went well. Took samples from three sites, sent to lab for analysis. X-rays normal, fb unlikely? Mr Hawke collected Dog in the evening; advised I’d call and inform him of the lab results. Should take 10-14 days.

**30/01/9:32**

Mr Hawke phoned during lunch break, had a small concern about wound healing. Everything sounded normal so advised if any concerns to bring Dog in for check; Mr Hawke declined.

~~He just wanted to talk, he said. Wanted to discuss new government edict on the raising of the minimum wage. Good idea implemented poorly and for the wrong reasons - offset by huge tax cuts to rich - abhorrent! Mr Hawke invited me to discuss the matter further over Antivan in town tomorrow. Said yes. Been a long time since Karl. I’m owed this, no matter how much Isabela teases.~~

**02/02/9:32**

CLIENT RECORD UPDATED, REASON: DISCOUNT  
_Discounts applied:_ STAFF (100% reduced consultation, 100% reduced vaccination, medication and parasite prevention AT COST, surgery at 50% reduced)

NOTE: Dinner was excellent :)))))

**03/02/9:32**

CLIENT RECORD UPDATED, REASON: NEW CONTACT DETAILS  
_Significant Other:_ 07833455677 (Anders)

**05/02/9:32**

Dog v+ under dining table again. Luckily I happened to be on site to inspect v+ - clear, filmy. As Dog has in the last 2 days eaten three socks, a tie, and half a scrub top am beginning to suspect fb may actually be primary cause? Fabric unlikely to show up in x-ray. Recommend ultrasound. Mr Hawke keen to proceed. Booked Dog in for 7th as Mr Hawke has romantic weekend getaway booked from 8th-11th.

~~We’re going to Sundermount. I haven’t taken time off in three years. Haven’t wanted to. Now I can’t picture wanting anything else. Maker help me, but after everything, I’d fight to the death to keep him - I’d drown us in blood. Is that melodramatic? Maybe. I don’t care. He’d find it charming. I didn’t believe I would meet someone so passionate, so smart, so dedicated to helping the oppressed, and… I think Karl would understand.~~

**07/02/9:32**

Dog 62kg, which is frankly a surprise given how much of my dinner he hoofed down last night while I wasn’t looking, BAR (with copious open, slobbery affection), HR/MM WNL although hard to assess given how hard he was trying to lick my face. Conscious u/s performed in consultation room. Mr Hawke held, muzzle not needed as Dog seems quite comfortable with my presence. :)

U/s showed several unusual presences along large intestine. Recommend ex lap upon return from romantic weekend getaway in Sundermount, as chronic v+ not considered urgent. Mr Hawke agreed.

**12/02/9:32**

Dog 61.5kg (unsurprising given that all he did was charge around like a mad thing all weekend… ), BAR, HR/RR WNL. Chest clear, lungs clear, okay to proceed with GA. ~~Hawke kissed us both good luck Maker help me he’s perfect~~

Pre-medded with triple elfroot/embrium/deathroot combo. Ex-lap performed with the aid of both Isabela RVN and Merrill RVN, see attached anaesthethic chart.

 _DOCUMENT ATTACHED:_ ANAESTHETHIC CHART

Removed from Dog’s large intestine seven socks, a plastic crisps packet, two ties, one fine leather glove and a scrap of clearly discarded paper with my ring size on it in Hawke’s handwriting. Disposed of the latter in order to maintain the element of surprise. Dog recovered from GA within twenty minutes.

 _DOCUMENT PRINTED:_ POST-OPERATIVE CARE INSTRUCTIONS  
_DOCUMENT PRINTED:_ THEDOSIAN COLLEGE OF VETERINARY SURGEONS GUIDE ON ROMANCING YOUR CLIENTS  
_DOCUMENT PRINTED:_ STAFF PET SURGERY DISCOUNT VOUCHER

Discharged Dog to myself and Hawke at the end of the day. ~~We’ll have to miss rally against homophobia tomorrow in order to keep an eye on him and make sure he recovers okay. I think we’ll be fine, at least for now. There are always more things to rally against, more injustices to combat, but Hawke… well. He’s everything I needed. After Karl, I won’t lose him. I won’t. He’s the brightest light in Kirkwall. I hope he feels the same. We’re moving so fast but everything feels so right, and… and I’m going to talk to him tomorrow about maybe moving in. Ever since our date at the Antivan restaurant I’ve only gone home to collect my toothbrush anyway.~~

~~I’m going to say it. Tonight. The big three words. I’ve been holding back from saying them but that note I found in Dog’s stomach…~~

~~Wish me luck, Isabela, I know you read all the rough draft clinical notes. I’ll let you know how it goes in the morning.~~

**13/02/9:32**

CLIENT RECORD UPDATED, REASON: NAME CHANGE  
PATIENT NAME CHANGED FROM ‘DOG HAWKE’ TO 'DOG ANDERS-HAWKE’.


	3. The war is over, and we are beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The war is over, and we are beginning" - Canon-compliant, Post-DA2, art prompt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to [this beautiful fanart](http://reikah.tumblr.com/post/150834767253/dorkishdorkish1905-the-war-is-over-and-we-are) of Hawke and Anders by [dorkishdorkish1905](http://dorkishdorkish1905.tumblr.com/post/150831756904/the-war-is-over-and-we-are-beginning).
> 
> (For those unable to click the link - the art features Hawke and Anders wearing travelling cloaks over their DA2 outfits, Anders in profile looking toward Hawke and Hawke in 3/4 profile with his back to the viewer and his head turned toward Anders. Hawke has his right arm raised, his fingers curled in Anders's cloak at his shoulder. Anders's left hand is cupping the back of Hawke's wrist and he is looking at Hawke with an expression of naked relief; Hawke is looking back at him with the shadows around his eyes lending tenderness to his expression. The artist captioned the work with the phrase "The war is over, and we are beginning".)

In Cumberland, a Templar almost gets Anders. Hawke kills him quick and messy, and sinks to his knees in the wet grass, both hands over Anders's abdomen, gaping open beneath the torn fabric of his coat; and he prays like he has never prayed before to a Maker who has every reason to despise the pair of them to not let him bleed out. Anders's teeth are gritted, white like a ribcage, and through them he says: "I'm fine."

In Orlais it's a bounty hunter; catches them at a supposed safe-house, comes at Hawke with a knife. Anders burns him to death, and Hawke thinks there's something Andrastian in that even as he sags heavily against a wardrobe, both hands over his neck; an arterial cut, blood pouring out. Anders is there, and Hawke touches his tunic with a wet red palm, says: "I'm fine."

There's a vengeful Sister in Fereldan, a pack of blood mages in Tantervale, a loyalist mage in Ostwick, a Seeker in Dairsmuid and many more Templars. They pick themselves up and move on, tell each other they're doing just fine, because to say anything else is unthinkable.

Sometimes it feels like for every Circle they tear down, they themselves are knocked back; for every child reunited with their mother, there's a Templar determined to take the cost of a life saved from them in blood. The war leaves its marks on them, notches and batters them like weapons. Maybe they are. Hawke feels like it somedays, like his heart is hollow and empty, some chipped and scarred block of stone in his chest beating out of duty and nothing else.

He doesn't think he could do this alone. He doesn't think Anders could do this alone. Sometimes he wakes and Anders will be sitting on the other side of the room, glowing blue and quietly rolling a small coin between thumb and forefinger; a Knight-Corporal's badge, taken from the body of a loyalist in Wycombe. They had seen only the gold, and were hungry and desperate enough they had hoped to sell it before they saw the sigil. Sometimes Hawke wakes before Anders and feels that same restlessness.

But then there are the days he turns his head and Anders meets his eye and smiles; there are the days he rolls over, half-awake, and finds Anders warm and drowsy beside him in their bedroll.

There's the staff-callouses on Anders's fingertips, and how they feel against the softest parts of his skin: his wrist, his bare thighs, the backs of his knees. There's the stubble Anders never can quite tame; the feathers he clings to even now, musty and damp in the mornings; there's the way his hazel eyes glow softly - and sometimes literally - with delight when a child they are chaperoning runs into the waiting arms of a grateful parent.

Varric asked him once: why Anders? And the truth was never something Hawke could put into words. It's not something that there are words enough for; it is the feeling in his chest, something equally terrible and wonderful. Sometimes he looks at Anders and all he can think is _I would drown us in blood too_.

And though he dreams sometimes of a mantle above which to hang their cloaks, he knows their work will go on; that when you fall in love with a man who carries justice (Justice) in his heart, there's no peaceful retirement to the country. He knows, too, that it doesn't matter: that he's here until the end.

And when they read the notices posted on the doors of the Chantry in their latest rat-spit village, the ones stamped with the seal of the Inquisition and the new Divine both - that announce _this is it, the war is over_ \- he knows what to say. Anders touches his wrist; he touches the soft folds of Anders's traveling cowl in return, works his fingers into the worn cloth. It's been years. Feels longer; ten, a hundred. Lifetimes. Life _lines_. Anders is looking at him, eyes soft with mingled disbelief and delight and uncertainty, and he knows what to say.

It's not yet been ten years, let alone a hundred. Hawke looks Anders in the eye and says: "we're going to be fine."

"We always are," Anders murmurs. The edges of his eyes still crinkle when he smiles, same as they have since Hawke first met him. It feels like forever ago, like another life. But the scar on his cheekbone is new, and so are a hundred other nicks and scars that Hawke can't see but knows still exist, hidden beneath the old clothes he still wears.

The war is over. What comes after is naturally something different. And Hawke has never been afraid to leap into the unknown, all the more so because it is also so very _known_ ; and he has never been afraid of Anders.

When Hawke tugs him in for a kiss, he tastes like something new. And that, too, is fine.


	4. Crossroads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Crossroads" (Modern!AU, art prompt)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to [these beautiful fanarts](http://reikah.tumblr.com/post/150506914015/this-beautiful-and-atmospheric-art-desperately) of Hawke and Anders by [elvararion](http://elvararion.tumblr.com/post/150487674564).
> 
> (For those unable to click the link - the first picture is of Anders from the waist-up, sitting behind a table somewhere. He's wearing a green coat buttoned up tight and a chequered red and pink scarf wound tightly around his throat, feathers just visible at his hem; his shoulders are hunched, his left arm across the table in front of him with his hand hidden in the sleeve of his jacket, and his right hand is curled around the handle of a mug in front of him. The colour scheme is claustrophobic - dark blood-red background and very subdued, washed-out colours for his clothes. His body language is clamped down tight and his expression is wary - he's glancing off-screen at someone.
> 
> The second picture is of Hawke, facing toward the viewer, wearing a red flannel shirt with an apron over it, arms outstretched and smiling as he glances off camera - he's holding a barista's sprinkler in his right hand and there are flowers and empty mugs around him; his background is lighter and has some detailing in it. The colour scheme for his surroundings make him and his clothing pop, and his outstretched arms and relaxed body language set him apart from Anders.)
> 
> As soon as I saw the moody art I was struck with an intense longing. My exact words were "this beautiful and atmospheric art desperately makes me long for a modern au, where..."

... hawke works at a mom’n’pop diner in the middle of nowhere, somewhere along one of those long winding roads of american mythology that are never the destination, only ever the nexus; and the stranger walks in one day with his scarf over his long nose and the cold bringing red to his cheeks and their eyes immediately meet.

the blond guy breaks his gaze first, takes a seat in the booth by the window, shoulders hunched in small, head ducked. he keeps the scarf on, drawing its tatty feathered edges closer around his shoulders. hawke comes over, notebook in hand, asks what he can do for the guy today: just coffee, he’s told, no sugar, no milk.

“like tar,” stranger says, and smiles briefly, just a flash of white teeth over the edge of the scarf. he’s fidgety, restless, and alone; bruised-blue circles around his eyes, freckles scattered over his cheeks like stars, chapped lips from both cold and biting.

“gotcha,” hawke says. “want a sandwich to go with it?”

stranger shakes his head no. goes back to staring out the window; drums bitten-down fingernails absently against the tabletop, to the tune of the jukebox. there’s a hole in his ear where there used to be an earring once, some time ago. behind the counter hawke checks the coffee pot, pulls a face.

when the mug meets the table top, it shakes blondie out of wherever he’s gone, somewhere inside his own head. he blinks through the steam, glances up at hawke. “this isn’t coffee.”

”got that right,” hawke agrees mildly. “hot chocolate. with marshmallows, on the house. you look like twenty miles of bad road, stranger. thought maybe you could use a pick-me-up.”

stranger’s mouth moves, shapes a word in confusion. hawke smiles at him, nods, goes back to the counter; there’s a stack of receipts on the spike by the cash register and a man in a blue flannel shirt nearly twin to his own waiting to pay. blondie watches him go, looks down at his chocolate, looks up; hawke carries the weight of his gaze heavy on his back as he rings up blue-flannel’s meal, waves him out the door.

the bell rings his exit. there’s nobody else here but the two of them. hawke should be afraid - could be a robbery, recipe for disaster. isn’t. feels like he knows this man, like they were friends once, or something else, ten years ago. hundreds. another life. for a stranger he feels familiar, scratchy scarf and worn-out feathers and haunted, hunted expression and all.

stranger’s still watching him. hawke pours out a mug of hot chocolate for himself, adding cinnamon to taste; says, without looking up, “anything else you need, you let me know, stranger.”

out of the corner of his eye he sees blond guy licks those chapped lips. hawke wonders what they’d feel like, under his thumb. “it’s anders, actually,” he says. he speaks softly, so softly hawke can hardly hear him. “that’s my name. or what passes for it, i suppose.”

hawke nods. he knows the value of a name, after all, or something that passes for a name, and they’re not always the same thing. he watches anders take a sip from his hot chocolate; watches, with altogether too much eagerness, the way his shoulders loosen, the way the drawn-thin tension fades from his cheekbones, the wrinkles around his eyes.

feels like an old story. that’s good. there’s value in old stories. it’s why they last as long as they do. and hawke can’t fix everything, nor everybody; there’s plenty tearing this man apart, that’s plain to see. best hawke can hope to be is a bright light, in a dark place. it’s enough.

maybe it always has been.


	5. Hail Caesar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hail Caesar" (Canon divergent, Champion!Anders)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this post](http://storybookhawke.tumblr.com/post/150169035258) by storybookhawke, about how their team battle against the Arishok ended up with Anders soloing down the Arishok and all his men: "CHAMPION ANDERS."

After all was said and done - the dust settled, the corpses removed, the blood wiped from the walls - they named him Champion in a ceremony that lasted until the early hours of the morning. There was no crown to go with it - just some bruising, and a sense of righteousness that suffused him to his very core.

“This is it, you know,” Anders said, standing on a balcony at one of the higher class estates in Hightown and surrounded by his oldest friends, holding a flute of champagne loosely in one long-fingered grip. Everything in him felt coiled-tight, tense, but somehow almost… glad. “I have the power to bring about real change now. To bring justice to those who need it most.”

Varric chuckled, then winced, touching his ribs; despite his best efforts Anders hadn’t had quite enough mana left to completely cure them all, there on the throne room floor, and would have to continue his efforts once he had gathered some more energy. “Good on you, Blondie. Any thoughts to your first decree? Gonna go for the Viscount’s seat?”

“Perhaps in time,” Anders said thoughtfully. “The mages must remain my primary focus. I can advocate for them far better from here than I could from Darktown; perhaps my words about the injustice and cruelty carried out in the Gallows will finally reach the ear of the Grand Cleric - or even the Divine. If I can change the Gallows, heavily populated as it is…”

“Than maybe the rest of Thedas will change with it?” Varric guessed. He tilted his head, the light catching off his earrings, and snorted. “That’d be something to see. What do you think, Hawke?”

On Anders’s other side, Hawke tapped a thumb against a wine glass, which sang, and frowned thoughtfully at it. “If you’re the Champion of Kirkwall,” Hawke said slowly, ponderously, brows drawn together. “… Does that make you foremost amongst the city’s…. def _anders_?”

It took Varric a second to work it out, at which point he _cackled_ ; Anders could do nothing but put his head in his hands, shoulders sagging with despair, and murmur, “Oh _no_.”

“It’s just - the city’s hierarchy changing so quickly, I suppose you could call it a bit of an Ari- _shock_ ,” Hawke added, with a shit-eating grin.

“I think I can _ander_ stand where you’re coming from, Hawke,” Varric chipped in helpfully, “But Blondie did already rise to the _spirit_ of the occasion.”

“You know what,” Anders decided, hiding his grin in his sleeve, “My first act as Champion is going to be _kicking you out of my party_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I very nearly went for a champagne/champion/Anders three-fer pun and subjected you all to 'champagnders' but I held back at the last minute in the interests of public safety. *thumbs up*


	6. Live By The Sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Live By The Sword" (Canon-compliant, DA:A Anders)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to a request for non-magic combat headcanons about Anders.

“What’s this?” Anders said, his voice ringing oddly in the almost-empty armory. The Commander’s lantern light glinted off an assortment of blades, some racked and stored and others flung in corners where the surviving soldiers had hurled them; he thought there might even be some blood spattered here and there on a few of the swords. Ser Pounce, draped over his shoulders, purred throatily and headbutted him, and it was perhaps the only thing keeping him from turning tail and walking right out.

“’S an armory,” said Tabris, raising her lantern higher. “It’s where all the swords and stuff are kept in a castle. You’re a warden now, and they claim all this shit is mine, so we should get you kitted out. Before they change their minds, usually.”

“Ah,” Anders said, smiling nervously. “An armory. Right. For armour. Don’t tend to keep those in the Circle, you know; last thing the Templars want is a mage with a sword. The fireballs tend to scare them enough.”

“Also the demons,” Tabris said helpfully. She knelt, pulling a sword free from a heap of very similar swords; the end was flaked with black blood. With a sigh, she tossed it aside, where it landed with a clang that made Pounce flinch. “I fucking knew I’d get the shit-heap,” she complained. “Eamon’s armory was stuffed full of magic, and what’d I get? Fuckin’ Howe’s castle of pot-metal and rust. ‘First elven arlessa’ gets the dumpy castle filled with shit, as per-fuckin’- _always_.”

“How’d you know what was in the Redcliffe armory?” Anders asked, shushing Pounce with a small square of dried chicken, retrieved from one of his belt pouches.

“Oh,” Tabris said absently, “Investigating. Looking for clues. In desk drawers and a few safes, you know how it goes.”

He laughed despite himself at that, and saw the edge of her mouth move. Pounce licked the ends of his fingers in pursuit of another piece of chicken; Anders turned his hands over to show his friend there was nothing there. “Anyway,” he said. “I can’t use a sword. I’ve always found carrying one tends to draw attention. Of the negative kind, you know. People tend to think that if you have a sword, you must know how to use it - and if you know how to use it, you must be the kind of person who carries valuables enough to need defending… no, better to go without.”

Tabris glanced at him with her one gold eye, pupil slit and glowing faintly in the dim light. The other was hidden as always by the eyepatch, but right now mostly concealed in shadow; it made her look almost feral, like something sharp and jagged. _Elves_ , Anders thought, and bit his lip. “So what do you do if someone gets up close and personal? Ask them to stop?”

“I run away,” Anders said.

Tabris pinched the bridge of her nose. “You _run away_.”

“Sometimes with a haste spell,” he added helpfully. “Sometimes I freeze my truculent assailant to the floor. But mostly running away works.”

Better to run away, he thought, as his fingers found an especially itchy spot behind Ser Pounce’s left ear, particularly if the assailant was a templar; attacking a templar ended badly, he’d seen that enough. He was Anders, the coward, the runaway, and he was harmless and therefore still alive. Scarred from the dungeon, scared, but not Tranquil. He’d be no use to Karl if he were Tranquil.

Tabris frowned at him. “But you must have something to defend yourself with,” she said, “You can’t run _forever_.”

Anders laughed. “I’m good at ducking,” he said. “I’m pretty agile. Like a gazelle, but more feathers and with a unique charm and wit. And as for self defence - what, like a knife? Oh, _yes_ , a mage with a knife sharp enough to cut flesh!” He laughed again, and there was a sharp edge to it this time despite his efforts to stay cool. “That wouldn’t worry anyone - like, say, the templars - no, not at all! Downright reassuring, they’d find that! And you know, there’s something to be said for getting hit with a silence or a smite: my life just isn’t the same without me pissing myself and vomiting blood and seeing stars for six days and also passing out, once right down a cliff. A life spent not losing half my baby teeth to a well-timed smite and a rocky ridge just lacks a certain _joie de vivre_ , if you know what I mean.”

She sighed and glanced away. Anders suspected she knew what he meant. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” she said, and there was a certain grim kind of empathy there. “Fine. No swords. Take a dagger, though; I’d feel better if you had one, just in case.”

“Commander,” Anders said, very patiently, “I’m wearing a very lovely set of silk robes just sheer enough Nate can’t look at my chest without catching a glimpse of some intimate jewelry.” Which was a deliberate choice. He was playing a long game there, half out of curiosity and half because Nate’s face was _hilarious_.

“I got you that hoop for your _ear_ ,” Tabris muttered, but she didn’t sound too dismayed, not if Anders was any judge. Nate and the Commander? Stranger things had happened. Mostly at the Pearl, but hey, who was Anders to fight the will of the Maker?

“If anyone got close enough I’d need a knife -”

“Better run, then,” said Tabris. Her eye was hard and sharp, and her fingers touched the ring she carried around her neck on its worn leather thong. “Running’s _smart_ , most of the time. Nothing wrong with living to fight another day, Anders. Just so long as you make sure your enemy doesn’t get the same chance. Run away, but after that? That’s when you creep back in the night and shank the stupid motherfucker who thought he’d have you right in the back. Show them that you’re more dangerous than they ever thought you were, or they’ll never stop coming.”

There was a note of something bleak in her voice; she raised a hand, her thumb brushing briefly over the thick ridge of scar tissue winding out from beneath the eyepatch before she turned the gesture into a nose-rub. Anders, who recognised the gesture, tilted his head to one side. “There is that,” he agreed, thinking of a warehouse in Denerim, three dead templars dumped there in place of a phylactery that never was.

The thought sent a pulse of wariness through him, some part of him waiting for the hammer to drop. _Never hurt a templar_ , that had always been the golden rule; it was what had kept him breathing, and even now with the Darkspawn taint riding thick in his veins the old fear still had a solid grip on him. He touched his cheek to Pounce’s, who nuzzled his cheekbone, purring quietly, and made himself smile. “You know, I think we’re going to get along like a house on fire, Commander.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said, and her smile was the curve of a dagger blade in the dark. She held out a slim knife in a leather sheath, wide straps to let it be fastened around a waist; he took it from her with one hand, letting the weapon fall to his side.

He didn’t need a knife, he thought. He was smart and quick, and agile as a mountain goat over terrain that would cause any pursuer to balk; and when that failed - why, he was charming and talkative. He wasn’t Tranquil yet, was he? Or one of those poor bastards they dumped in the lake at the bottom of the tower, killed by any number of the hidden dangers of Circle life.

(Later, it was that knife he’d bury in Karl’s chest, punching it cleanly in between his third and forth rib with a physician’s eye for anatomy; but it was his - their - bare hands he’d use to tear apart the miserable mortals in silverite who moved to catch him afterward. _Show them_ , the Commander’s voice whispered in his ear. Anders was a runner and a coward and a charmer; Anders-and-Justice stood their ground and fought with magic and when that failed, sheer brute strength, and they were, both of them, two sides of the same coin.

Even a coward, backed into a corner, could find his fangs.)


	7. Decoding Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Decoding Hawke" (Canon-compliant, tongue-tied Hawke)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to [this lovely fanart](http://reikah.tumblr.com/post/137987577041/infernal-guard-when-your-sweetheart-came-home), by [infernal-guard](https://infernal-guard.tumblr.com)!
> 
> (For those unable to click the link - the art features Hawke and Anders in the Hawke Estate of DA2, kissing. From the angle of their bodies, Anders has flung himself into Hawke's arms at some velocity - Hawke's left arm is wrapped tightly around Anders's shoulders, hidden by his feather pauldrons; his right arm hangs free behind their bodies. In his right fist he's clutching a bouquet of 3 cream-coloured flowers that closely resemble tulips in his fist.)

The dog doesn’t bark when the front door opens, and it’s this more than anything else - the creak of a boot on a stair, the swish of fabric - that warns Hawke who his new guest is. Joyfully abandoning the accounts, he’s already en route to the bedroom door when it opens from the other side, and then Anders is in his arms, whip-thin and covered in dank-smelling feathers and all, and Hawke laughs into a kiss as happy as it is desperate.

“Well,” he says, when they finally part for air. He’s grinning. So is Anders. “Far be it for me to complain, but a ‘hello’ would have sufficed. Also, possibly less scandalous for the neighbours.”

Anders dimples when he smiles, Hawke notices, and wonders why he hadn’t before. Maybe that’s a thing to consider all by itself. “They’ll live,” he says. “And to be fair, they’ve surely seen much worse in here already.”

“True,” Hawke says, touching their foreheads together. Anders’s arms are still around Hawke’s chest; Hawke’s own forearm is braced against the back of his shoulders, feathers trapped against bony shoulderblades like hidden wings. There’s dust smudged in a line along Anders’s cheekbone, fine cobwebs scrawling over the dark blond of his hair like early greys. “How did you find the trip through the cellars?”

“Spidery,” Anders says. “Also filthy. I only had to make one trip with my things, at least. Bodahn took most of them for cleaning; I think he’s running a bath, too. At some point, love, you’re going to have to roll up those sleeves and sort them out. I know Fenris told you bodies add a certain something to home decor, but…”

Hawke sighs, and then darts in close and kisses him again. Anders’s lips are dry and rough, and he loves the way they curve upward against his mouth. 'Love,’ he’d said, with comfortable familiarity, and Hawke might joke it off but it still makes his heart squeeze tight in his chest, and the worst of it is, Hawke’s fairly sure that is no less than intentional on Anders’s part. “If you don’t like it,” he says, mock-offended, “You can go back to Darktown. And then I’ll have to trip over drunks just to bring you a sandwich, and then trip over them _again_ when I sweep you off your feet and bring you back here -”

Anders touches the tips of their noses together, and suddenly Hawke can’t remember any word except _whiskey_ , which is coincidentally both the colour of his lover’s eyes and something he wants to drink. It might help this giggly, fluttery feeling in his chest. Anders’s spine shifts and moves under the palm of Hawke’s hand, and when he raises his other to join in, the better to hold Anders - to touch him, all of him, the way he’s been wanting to for three damn years while Anders alternatively held himself apart and then gave him such quietly longing looks that Hawke’s _everything_ damn well ached in its own turn - he forgets all about his little gift until the petals whisper over the feathers of Anders’s pauldrons, and Anders moves back in surprise.

“Ah,” Hawke says, trying not to look too hang-dog at the sudden physical distance between them, and then, “I found these for you.”

Anders blinks at the ragged little bouquet, pale-cream tulips native to lands much further north than Kirkwall. “'Found’?”

“… Found,” Hawke says. Anders doesn’t need to know about the florist in Hightown’s market, about the sovereign the little elf woman had talked him out of. About the hour he’d spent, eyes dazed, head spinning, learning about the various things you could say with flowers while underneath his clothing the marks Anders had bitten, oh-so-gently, into his collarbone sung with joy.

“Are they roses?” Anders sounds as baffled as Hawke had felt. _There’s a whole language in flowers_ , the little elf woman had said. _A tulip is a declaration of love in almost any colour, but a cream one? That’s commitment._

 _I’ll take three_ , Hawke had said.

“They’re tulips,” Hawke says. Three years of aching. Mutual aching, as it turned out. Anders’s mouth moves, forms an _o_ of fascination. Hawke stares up at the ceiling, swallows; his heart pounds. “I… found them. On a walk. Thought they might be a good weed or something, for your clinic. Maybe.”

Anders touches his chin with a gentle thumb, tilts his head down for a kiss so achingly slow it manages to quiet even the fluttering in his stomach. The dust on his cheekbone makes his face look longer, thinner, as though it needed the help. Hawke’s toes curl inside his slippers; Anders’s tongue thrusts lazily into his mouth, sends his mind back to last night. This is an ache he is happy to live with.

“It’s alright, you know,” Anders tells him, when they part; the pad of his thumb is still so warm on Hawke’s chin, even through his beard. “You don’t have to say the words themselves. I already know.”

“About tulips?” Hawke tries.

“And sandwiches,” Anders agrees. His fingers, so long, so clever, fall to Hawke’s wrists. “Thank you, love.”

Whiskey, Hawke thinks, staring into Anders’s eyes. Honey. Amber? Autumn. _Fuck_. “You’re welcome,” he says, and tries for a grin. Anders offers it back. Definitely a dimple.

“All my life,” Anders says, suddenly serious, “I’ve dreamt of this.”

“Sandwiches?” Hawke offers.

“With _radish_ ,” Anders agrees, still poker-faced. “I’m only here for your kitchen.”

Hawke barks out a laugh not too dissimilar to his mabari and moves in for another kiss, for good luck; Anders leans into him entirely naturally, organically, and this time when they kiss, he tastes like nothing so much as good whiskey. Something in Hawke’s chest loosens. Anders _knows_ ; he understands because Anders speaks it too, sometimes, this language of roundabouts and vagueries and _aching for you_ and _brightest light in Kirkwall_ , and it feels… right.

Their tongues might not always cooperate, but luckily, there are other ways to speak than with words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *wipes away a tear* I just really love purple Hawke and the sandwich line, you guys. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	8. Mistaken Identity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Mistaken Identity" (Canon-compliant, post-DA2, disguises)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to [these portraits of default Garrett Hawke](http://reikah.tumblr.com/post/122088202666/queen-schadenfreude-see-this-is-what-i-mean), with and without beard, by [Queen-Schadenfreude](http://queen-schadenfreude.tumblr.com/)!

It was a simple idea in theory. The Chantry wanted Anders, dead or alive; the reward was inching closer to four figures - in _sovereigns_. But there was still much work to be done, dissension to be sown amidst Loyalists and Aequitarians in Circles through much of Thedas, and the long trip to the Anderfels had to be made no matter that every Chanter’s board between Ostwick and Hossberg had their likenesses tacked up next to the pleas for help. “Dye your hair dark,” Hawke said, “and grow a beard, and I’ll… shave mine, I guess.”

“What, all of it?” Anders hadn’t been able to resist reaching out to run his fingers through it as he spoke. “… I like your beard.”

“So do I,” said Hawke, pulling a face, “but I like us not being dead more, love.”

Anders hadn’t been able to disagree with that. The Ostwick Libertarians had given them a small pouch of smuggled gold along with a series of messages, and they were staying in a dirty dockside inn, for once, instead of a tent in a wet Free Marches field. Hawke had procured a straight razor from the innkeeper, who gazed upon his beard with mingled respect and regret, and shut himself in the inn’s shared bathroom to shave while Anders leaned against the door, both their staves in the curve of his arm, and waited for him, shaking his head at the inn’s other patrons as they wandered past the corridor.

It was probably foolish to mourn a beard, Anders told himself, but he would. He’d miss the scrape of it against his neck, the tickle of it against his shoulder when they slept - in musty sleeping rolls on hard ground, in caves, in tents in fields many miles from templars. It was a part of Hawke's life in Kirkwall, another thing Hawke had given up on his 

He touched the Amell estate key, hidden behind his clothes on the same leather thong he’d kept it on since he’d gotten it, and bit his lip; his chest ached, regret and affection mixed together. Things between them were still a little tense, but they were together. They were changing Thedas. That was what mattered.

The door opened behind him, startling him out of his navel-gazing; Hawke stood in the doorframe, slapping his naked cheeks. “My face is cold,” he complained. He’d washed the red streak of warpaint off the bridge of his nose, too.

Anders couldn’t imagine what his expression must have been like. He couldn’t seem to find the words. His hand fell away from the key, and came up slowly to cover his mouth. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, _Maker_.”

Hawke eyed him oddly. “What’s wrong?”

“… I’ve just discovered that I’m a cradle robber,” Anders said, and laughed at the expression on Hawke’s face. “I’m sorry, _Carver_ , have you seen _your brother_ anywhere?”

“I’m going to Hossberg and starting this revolution without you,” Hawke said, his jaw… set, Anders guessed, it was hard to tell without the bristly covering.

“No, you’re not,” Anders said, grinning. “You’re not old enough.”

Hawke looked up at the ceiling. “Is this payback for the time I laughed at you burning your eyebrows off?”

“No,” said Anders, “but you know, I’d forgotten about that. Thank you for the reminder, love.”

“It’s… going to be a very long trip to the Anderfels, isn't it?” Hawke said, with dawning horror. He slipped past Anders, giving his cheeks another slap.

“We can pick up a rattle to keep you entertained on the way,” Anders called after him, and laughed at his own joke. Hawke sighed deeply, but when he glanced back over his shoulders at Anders, the corner of his mouth was ever-so-slightly turned up.

“You know something," he said, holding open the door to their room, "It's... good to hear you laugh."

He grinned at Anders briefly, a flickering small thing but real despite that, and slipped into their room; as the door whispered closed behind him Anders touched the estate key again, head bowed, and smiled. It wasn’t just Thedas that was changing. Things between them were getting better, day by day.

They’d be okay, in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little bit unusual in that QS drew art in response to it, as well as the fic itself being in response to her art! Here's [Anders's reaction to Garrett's deforesting process](http://queen-schadenfreude.tumblr.com/post/122121090953/fauxfires-anders-couldnt-imagine-what-his), drawn beautifully by Q. Thanks hon, love you muchly!


	9. Blue Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Blue Skies" (AU; Temeraire/His Majesty's Dragon-DA2 fusion)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The _His Majesty's Dragon_ /Temeraire series can essentially be summed up with 'it's the Napoleonic Wars with _dragons_ ' and therefore makes for a _terrible_ crossover with Dragon Age, and yet here we are. I can't even blame this one on tumblr, I was just itching for dragon rider!Anders; I wrote a ton of excited notes about it [on my tumblr](http://reikah.tumblr.com/post/131312848471/fauxfires-things-i-would-love-someone-else-to) and nobody else picked it up and ran with it, so the old fanfic writer's saying applied - 'if you want something written, bust it out yourself'. Hope you enjoy!

Rolan was waiting for him outside the barracks, standing with one foot on the bottom step and a hand on the hilt of his sword. Anders hated him from the top of his unflattering widow’s peak down the scuffs on his templar-issue boots, and hated his smirk even more. “Mage,” he said, managing to make the word sound just like _robe_ despite being nothing at all alike.

Anders ran his hands through his hair to calm himself and forced himself to smile. “Rolan,” he said. “You know, we really ought to stop meeting like this, people will gossip.”

Rolan ignored this, shifting his weight to his back foot, and cocked his head to one side. “So, how did you find your fellow captains?”

“Charming,” Anders said, grinning widely while entertaining a small vision of the man on fire. “That Fenris - what a cad. They’re all just such an asset to the corps, clearly.”

“Hardly the mage paradise you expected?”

“Everywhere I am is a mage paradise,” Anders said, still smiling, and let his hands lower. “Is there something you want?”

This seemed to be hardly the answer Rolan was looking for; he narrowed his eyes and set his jaw, vexed by Anders’s refusing to rise to the bait. Good. Templars were all alike, in their hatred, and any mage who survived their Harrowing had to learn how to coast on it without absorbing it; in the Circle alone Anders had had to put up with worse than Fenris’s drawling dislike and Aveline’s open contempt. He could survive a few months longer, at least until Justice had grown a little further, and then - well. They’d be gone, with a bit of luck.

“I’m to escort you to inspect your dragon’s pen,” Rolan said, a little reluctantly, then brightened. “As with any mage accepted by a dragon, you are to have a templar liaison, for your own protection. I have been accepted as yours. I will be accompanying you throughout the barracks and to your sleeping chambers, to ensure your safety, mage.”

“Gosh,” Anders said, and showed his teeth. “This crush of yours is going all the way, isn’t it? Well, if we’re to share a room, I think you’re going to need to propose. I do expect a ring - could be a scandal, otherwise. Gold and sapphire, if you please, blue is my favourite colour.”

Rolan’s nose wrinkled, but that was all. Anders should be so lucky to get a templar vulnerable to such crude temptation. He’d used it before, on a few of his escapes; just to distract or annoy, nothing further. He sighed. “Just take me to Justice,” he said, and with a small sneer, Rolan finally slid his foot off that bottom step, leaning back to allow him to pass.

They’d put Justice in a small pen at the very end of a long row of pens; at the height of their power, during the occupation and long before the current war, the Orlesians had barracked some fifty-seven dragons here in Hightown. Kirkwall was ideally placed as a nexus on several flight paths, and from its walls dragons had access to Orlais, the rest of the Free Marches, and Ferelden across the sea. With the majority of its fighting dragons engaged in the war on multiple fronts, however, Orlais had handed the site over in its entirety to the Fereldan Royal Air Force, of which Anders supposed they were technically now part.

As they passed the rows of sleeping dragons, Anders couldn’t help but peer at each one curiously, trying to work out what beasts belonged to the surly aerial corps riders who’d greeted him with such disdain in the shared quarters not ten minutes past. The huge red monster coiled in a lazy heap, sound asleep - it may have been unimaginative, but Anders couldn’t help but mentally assign him to Aveline. The name outside its pen read _Drake_ , which seemed like the sort of unimaginative name a woman married to a templar might come up with.

Grey Victoria was eating half a cow when they walked past, and she lifted her head to eye them with sneering disdain much like the elf who obviously rode her; even if Anders hadn’t known enough of the Imperial tongue to translate her name, the leather feather hanging from a knotted cord beneath her pen’s plaque might have given it away. She was a sleek thing, lithe and smooth with little in the way of horns and ridges to interrupt the outline of her body, and she wore heavy metal sheaths on her feet, the better to protect her talons in a fight. Rolan muttered something under his breath, wrinkling his nose, and Anders broke his gaze. Fenris didn’t seem to want him here at all, much less eyeballing his dragon. The fewer opportunities Anders had to interact with the elf, the better.

There were several empty pens after Victoria’s, and the next two were opposite each other: Siren’s was open and empty, the racks lining one wall divested of its harness; three carabiner straps had been taken from the wall - probably just a trip to the feeding grounds. A dazzlingly gaudy dragon-sized choker hung next to the carabiners, made of gold and glittering with what looked like small shards of rhinestone. This must be the pirate’s dragon. Either that or there were _two_ riders here who shared Anders’s views on jewelry (namely: the more of it the better).

The dragon opposite Siren’s pen was only a scarce bit larger than Justice, although much better proportioned. It was a pale green, its eyes a strikingly vivid blood-red, and it was curled into a heap scratching something out in the sand that lined its pen with a foreclaw about as long as Anders’s thigh. _Audacity_ , read the plaque outside this one’s pen, followed by a string of what looked almost - elvhen? A Dalish, perhaps? Here?

Rolan jabbed him sharply in the small of his back, and he sighed as he walked on. Another empty pen on the right, two down from Siren’s; _Bianca_ , read this one. He peered in but saw nothing unusual or, oddly, personal, except for a series of sandboxes built out of wooden lattices on the floor. Making a mental note, Anders continued.

Justice had been put in a pen right at the very end, and as soon as Anders approached he could not only see the blue glow of his dragon’s unusual markings spilling out through the grate-work of the door, but hear a low sussuration of voices; Justice, being all of nine tons heavy, could be heard from some distance even in a whisper. Rolan put his hand on the hilt of sword again, which made Anders scowl and up his pace. He didn’t particularly care if Rolan and Justice liked each other, mostly due to his just generally not really caring very much for Rolan at all; but Justice was all of five weeks old, and didn’t know any better - and Rolan did. Or should.

His dragon was coiled up at the back of the pen glowing quietly to himself, a strange man standing in front of him, head tilted up. Anders swore as he ran his hands over the grate at the mouth of the pen; to his surprise it was not locked, and he pulled it open easily. As soon as he did Justice’s head jerked up, and the unnaturally bright glow dimmed; the man turned toward him as well. “Evening,” Anders said.

“Anders,” Justice replied, with some relief, and surged forward. His jaw slipped easily into Anders’s waiting palms, and Anders ran a hand over the smooth scales of his chin, fingers tracing the rents in Justice’s hide through which that strange internal light gaped.

“This is your rider, eh?” The stranger was eyeing him appraisingly; he was tall, with the sort of biceps you normally needed to hoist quite a lot of mainsails to achieve, shown off adequately by his leather vest. With the wolf’s fur ruff and sharp-looking gauntlets, he gave off quite a savage air somehow only accentuated by a neatly-trimmed beard the same glossy black as his hair. There was a streak of something alarmingly red painted over the bridge of his nose, which probably didn’t help. “I thought I’d come to say hello to the new arrivals, but he was alone. Did you get lost?”

“I was at the barracks, meeting and greeting. Well, I mean, _I_ say meeting and greeting, _some_ might say I was busy getting my face ripped off by a tattooed elf,” Anders said. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Ah,” said the stranger, and grinned. It took some of the sourness from his expression, and revealed small wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, and Anders couldn’t help liking him all the more for it. “Yes. Fenris. He’s not keen on mages. Personal reasons, not my place - harsh life, so on and so forth. Let me guess, you said ‘hello,’ he said something like, 'another mage, just what we need’ and things went north from there?”

“Something like that,” Anders said, lightly. He was wise to these sort of mind games; he had… however many months it took Justice to mature before he’d be able to make a break for it, and knew better than to get involved in a mud-slinging match over a stranger in front of another stranger.

“He’s not usually this gruff,” the stranger said. “I mean, he’s never smiles and sunshine around mages he doesn’t know, but he’s not a bad sort, I promise. Our hospitality is usually much better than this.”

“If this is Kirkwall hospitality, Kirkwall brutality must rip your face off,” Anders said, more amused than offended. “Good to know about the aversion to mages.”

Justice’s eyes narrowed, and he drew his head back; Anders tried to remember the days when he’d been able to pick his dragon up, and couldn’t. His wings were still enormous, and he still tripped over them when he made his ungainly way around; Anders couldn’t help but hope his dragon didn’t quite grow to the size of Drake. "Someone was hurtful to you?”

“Not everybody loves a mage, Justice,” Anders said, and tried to smile. “I’m fine, see? Just grumbling. Nobody kicked me in the head, even.”

“But you didn’t _do_ anything,” his dragon replied, unhappily. “That seems unfair.”

“I can see where his name comes from,” the stranger laughed. “There’s very little fairness… or Justice… ahead. Well. Actually from where I’m standing there seems to be quite a _lot_ of Justice, for one so young. Hatched five sennights ago, he told me?”

Anders shrugged. “He was there,” he said. “I see no reason to doubt him.”

“The dragon hatched on the second of Winter’s March,” Rolan added from behind them. He had his arms crossed, standing with his feet braced and his jaw set, glaring at Justice; the dragon snorted in contempt, eyeing him back with equal disdain. Despite numerous attempts by the various templars on board the _Blackmarsh_ to explain the noble and just purpose of their order, Justice seemed continually unimpressed by what he considered mere excuses for tyranny. This was, no doubt, in no small part why Rolan had been handed over to the aerial corps with the pair of them. Nobody wanted a seditionary libertarian dragon, especially not handled by a serial escapee.

“Templar,” the stranger said, and his voice was notably cooler.

“Ser Rolan, formerly of the Amaranthine chantry,” Rolan said. “I was with the mage on - ”

“Captain.”

Rolan paused. “I beg your pardon?”

The stranger crossed his arms over his chest. Those biceps could probably smother a reasonably large pig, Anders thought, with some appreciation. “All riders of Royal Air Force dragons are ranked, Ser. It’s Captain Anders. I see you have a Knight-Corporal’s bars, which would make Anders your superior, since as you should well know, a Captain of the air is equal in rank to a Knight-Captain in your order.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Anders said, and grinned at the barely-disguised outrage on the man’s face. “Does that mean I can send him back to Amaranthine? I hear it’s lovely this time of year. Nice rotting fish smell in the air around those wonderful summer markets.”

“He is an _apostate_ ,” Rolan sneered, ignoring Anders yet again. A soft blue light began to spill over his face, which paled, and without thinking about it Anders reached out to the side and set his hand at the very back of Justice’s jaw, behind the formidable plated mandibular joint. Justice was growling; it hadn’t yet approached human audible range, but Anders could feel the vibration against his palm.

The stranger did not seemed surprised. "An apostate? Here? You don't say?" He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out loudly, “Hey! Apparently the new guy is an apostate!”

Inside the pen opposite Justice’s, which Anders had hardly paid attention to before now, shadows shifted. Rolan glanced sharply over his shoulder as a taloned foot swooped ponderously forward, scales slithering over stone; a head the size of a carthorse emerged from the gloom, black glossy scales with a dash of red across the bridge of its muzzle, eyes the same bright scarlet. “An apostate, you say,” it said, and its deep, rumbling voice was loud enough Anders was quite sure it could be overhead by every other dragon in the barracks. “Shocking. Should I hide the silverware, or will you?”

“Apostates are intelligent beings, and deserve to be respected accordingly,” Justice said severely, and the huge red-and-black dragon snorted a plume of smoke; Rolan skittered backward a few steps, his hands twitching at his belt.

The stranger laughed. “Well said,” he said. “I can see why you were given the name Justice. It’s an odd choice, but it suits you. Don’t you think, Champion?”

The older dragon blinked at them. “Really? Criticism? From _you_? You were going to name me _Dragon_ until Bethany told you not to be so foolish,” it said, reproachfully.

“Justice named himself,” Anders volunteered. “I was going to give him a name with _much_ more gravitas. Like Ser Thunderwings.”

“Truly? I change my mind,” the stranger said cheerfully. “To answer you, Ser Templar: I too am an apostate. My guard sees no need to hover. You ought to go find him, ask him how he does his job. He’s at the barracks, ask for Ser Thrask. It might be useful for you.” He rolled his eyes. “It’s hardly as though Anders could easily escape from a Hightown dragon barracks, with a five-week-old dragon in tow,” he said, scornfully. “And if he tried to go on foot, his dragon would just follow anyway.”

“This is correct,” Justice said, sounding pleased.

“You’re _not helping_ ,” Anders said out of the corner of his mouth.

Rolan hesitated, but the stranger tilted his head and Champion yawned, teeth longer than Anders’s torso; and this, more than his words, must have worked. “Fine,” the templar said, with ill grace. “But this relaxed attitude can only lead to ruin. I will be writing to the Knight-Commander here about this.”

“As you wish,” said the stranger, and turned back to Anders, blocking Rolan out with a simple roll of his shoulder. “You know, I completely forgot to introduce myself. I’m Garrett Hawke; I’m in charge of that great big spoiled handbag opposite us.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, to the big black and red dragon. “That’s Champion. He’s a lazy lump.”

“Go sit on a turnip,” grumbled his dragon, and there was a whisper of movement as he uncoiled himself further; he was big, as big as Drake if not slightly larger, with long twisting horns and scarlet edges to his wide wings.

“Tried,” Hawke said, “Isabela wrote a limerick about it. It was both broad in scope and terrifying in delivery.”

“I remember the one,” Champion said. “It was _especially_ terrifying when _someone_ belted it out while drunkenly weaving up and down the dragon pens in the early hours of the morning after the last Satanalia feastday.”

“Just showing my appreciation for my friends’ artistry,” Hawke said. His eyes sparkled when he smiled, and he smiled very widely indeed; it transformed him. “Besides, Fenris said my rendition was 'touching’ and 'heartbreaking’.”

Champion shook his head. “I’ll blame your patchy memory on the drink,” he said. “The exact words were 'soul-destroying’.”

“With Fenris? Any exaggeration is appreciation,” Hawke said.

Anders laughed. Justice shifted under his hands, settling himself on the sandy ground; much like a cat, he swept his tail up and over his forepaws as he settled his wings upon his back. He’d learned that from the Blackmarsh’s ship’s cat; after he’d hatched - after Anders had lied and cheated his way into his hatching - Anders had been allowed out of his cramped little bunk near the infirmary to be with him, and the ship’s cat (Comte du Mittens) had followed.

Hawke smiled at him, his nose wrinkling; the red smear crinkled with the skin. Rolan was gone, if not for good. It was the first time since his last escape attempt, during the Blight, that Anders had not had a Templar breathing down the back of his neck, and it felt blissfully liberating. Hawke reached out and traced one of the rents in Justice’s scales with the barest tips of his fingers. “So,” he said, “What’s your story? Apostate? Circle?”

“Circle,” Anders said. “In Ferelden. I kept on running away, for some reason.”

“They were cruel,” Justice said. “You did no wrong; they had no right to hold you or any other mage prisoner.”

“I dare say I don’t need to ask you which fraternity you belonged to,” Hawke said, the edge of his mouth curling upward.

“This isn’t my fault,” Anders replied primly. “I just wanted to escape. He came to these conclusions on his own.”

Admittedly, he might have said a few things; but truly, Justice’s disdain for the entire system was much more involved than Anders had ever gotten. The system was broken. The Circles were no solution at all, prone to apathy and indifference; and the Templars an even worse stopgap, prone to cruelty; but Anders knew better than to think it could ever _change_. Or that he could be the catalyst. He was one mage, considered (rightfully) devious, untrustworthy and obnoxious by his jailors. He was hardly the stuff change was made of. His life had been spent running and then being dragged back; seven escape attempts, before the war had started and he’d been loaded onto a ship at Amaranthine, drafted into service as an asset.

As if sensing his thoughts, Justice nudged him very gently, with the end of his muzzle. His breath was a warm breeze on the back of Anders’s neck. “Your escaping was an attempt to secure personal liberty,” he said. “Nobody has yet explained to me in a way I find satisfactory why such measures should be required.”

“I think he spent too long on that Tevinter ship before the _Blackmarsh_ found him, as an egg,” Anders said to Hawke. “He’s very stubborn about all of this rot. Mage freedom. Liberty, and so on. Me, I just want what everyone else has; a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to fly a dragon over a bunch of fools.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Hawke said lightly. “The stubbornness, I mean, the right to fly a dragon you’ve got. He’ll be in my formation, once he’s finished growing; it’s hard to tell with those experimental Tevinter crossbreeds, but we need another heavy weight to counterbalance Drake.”

“A heavyweight that isn’t me,” Champion offered from across the way, and blew two perfect smoke rings across the walkway between his pen and Justice's. “I’m a fire-breather, so the formation’s built around my gifts. I'm the centrepiece. You could even call me the star of the show.” He flipped his wings smugly onto his back, arching his long serpentine neck; Hawke rolled his eyes, but fondly.

“We’ll see,” he said. “That glow-in-the-dark trick might make him useful for night missions, at the least. We’re all learning, this unit. Champion’s only nine months old; the Blight destroyed all but Drake of Ferelden’s original Air Force.”

Justice grumbled, a wordless mutter in Anders’s ear, to which he paid no heed. The wind ruffled the tips of Hawke's hair, the wolf's fur ruff around his throat; that slash of scarlet over the bridge of his nose seemed darker in the light, a vivid black line across his face. Anders was beginning to suspect he might even be an apostate - a true apostate, born and bred free. “How did you come to join, then?”

“That,” Hawke said with relish, “Is a long story. Luckily for you, I’m a uniquely amazing storyteller - ”

“By which he means he’s an outrageous serial liar,” Champion quipped.

“- I was going to comment on my excellent dramatic timing and good hair, but there’s that too. Anyway, it’s an excellent story. There’s Darkspawn, ogres, mabari and apostates involved, not to mention pirates, ale, nugs and Varric’s chest hair, which is honestly the most thrilling part of the whole piece. I’m going to need to wet my throat while I tell it, so tell you what, why don’t I take you back inside and re-introduce you to everyone?”

Anders hesitated. “What, now? We didn’t exactly make the greatest of initial impressions.”

Hawke shrugged. “Then we’ll fix it,” he said. “Everything’s awkward at first. We’re all barracked together, while we train; we’ll have plenty of time to develop good camaraderie when we’re accidentally walking in on each other in the baths, and so on.”

“Do you do that often?” Anders asked, unable to keep himself from smiling, just a little; Hawke seemed to have that effect on him. It was good to meet another mage. It was good to meet another mage who didn’t flinch from the templars, and who didn’t seem to hate him for wanting to be free.

“Only when the doors are unlocked,” Hawke said, and raked his gaze over him before smiling. “I might need to hide the key.”

Anders laughed, in mixed surprise and delight, but before he could shape an appropriately flirty reply, Justice shoved his head between them with a low rumble. He was glowing, very faintly, blue light filling those cracks in his skin; that odd bio-luminescence that seemed to come and go with his emotional state. “Anders is my Captain,” he said, very sharply. “You will do no such thing. He deserves both dignity and respect.”

“ _Justice_ ,” Anders hissed, startled, and Hawke scratched at his beard, leaning away.

Champion chuckled. “Looks like you have your work cut out for you, Hawke,” he said across the way, breathing out a cloud of smoke; he snapped his inner eyelids over his bright red eyes and shifted in his pen, beginning to coil back in the shadows.

“If only my own dragon showed me such commendable loyalty,” Hawke lamented. “It’s not too late to trade, is it? You can have Champion for some Qunari horn balm and three pairs of torn trousers.”

The dragon in question just laughed, retreated all the way back into the shade; only the wisps of smoke curling out from around his pen grate gave him away. From the darkness, he said, rather dryly, “I’d trade you in for a very pretty rock the size of your _thumb_ , Hawke, and still consider it a bargain.”

“ _Ouch_ ,” Hawke said, clapping both of his hands over his heart; he was grinning nevertheless, his teeth white and even in the gloom. “How about this, Justice: I’m going to take Anders into the barracks to meet the other riders in his formation, we’ll have some drinks, I might grope him a bit - with his consent, of course - and then I’ll return him to you. Unharmed. Still dignified. I hope.”

“You haven’t seen me _drunk_ ,” Anders muttered, with feeling. The prospect of the groping didn’t bother him. It’d been a long time since his last fling; he hadn’t wanted anyone on board the _Blackmarsh_ , too crude, too wed to the sea, too _templar_ for his taste; and he hadn’t had another mage since Karl, and Maker knew how that’d ended up. Hawke was handsome, and charming in his confidence.

Justice cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowed. “Swear it,” he said.

Hawke inclined his head. “Very well,” he said, unfazed. “I solemnly swear that no harm shall come to Captain Anders, and he will be delivered safely back to you in the morning.”

“I’ll be _fine_ ,” Anders added, still flushed with mortification, and, rather reluctantly, Justice nodded.

“Don’t let the templar bother him,” his dragon added. “He is discourteous and invasive. I do not like him.” After a pause, Justice added, “Anders says that I will cause difficulties if I kill him?”

“Justice!” Anders hissed, horrified.

“Yes,” Hawke said, looking thoughtful. “We as a species tend to be made very uncomfortable by dragons wantonly killing humans they don’t like. Don’t worry. I’ll see what I can do.”

“There’s no point,” Anders said to him, “I’m a serial escapee. If it’s not Rolan, it’ll be someone worse. Rylock, from Kinloch, maybe. There’s no use complaining.”

“This isn’t the Circle, Anders,” Hawke said mildly, pushing the grate to Justice’s pen open. “It’s no mage paradise or anything, but it’s still a better option. I’ll speak to some people. It’s not like we can arrange for him to have a tragic accident… although Varric does know some people, if you know what he means, and I _sincerely_ hope you do because it’ll save him elaborating with an embarrassing wink-wink-nudge-nudge routine. You’re one of us now, and if Orlais wants you two to fight its war, it needs to make sure you’re not… you know… mutinous.”

Anders snorted, following him out; Justice stretched out on the sand behind them, and he gave his dragon a wave, which Justice returned with a flick of his tail. Hawke threw a mock-salute toward Champion, and was answered with a disgusted snort. “If you say so,” Anders said, but he was thinking of Karl, and Kinloch hold, and seven escapes. Nothing changed. Nothing _could_ change. Grin and struggle onward, that was all you could do; he’d learned that early.

One stolen dragonet hatched five weeks ago couldn’t change the world. It was enough to have no Rolan in sight, and an attractive man flirting with him. Rolan had been right: the Royal Air Force wasn’t quite the freedom he’d dreamed of back at the tower - but it was already better than the Circle for those reasons. “Thank you,” he said, “You know, for going to the trouble. Of being nice. Most people don’t make the effort.”

Hawke raised an eyebrow. “Nice to whom? Justice? Or you?” He glanced at Anders side-long, then shook his head. “Don’t answer that. You _are_ worth the effort. Honestly, Circle mages.”

“Apparently,” Anders said, and made himself smile. Hawke had been kind to him, for all he didn’t need to be; if the missing riders were even half as nice as him, it may not be an entirely awful wait for Justice to mature enough for their escape. And if Hawke was not the exception… well. He ran his fingers through his hair with one hand, and smiled at Hawke somewhat crookedly. “I’m a Captain now, you said? And as a Captain, and an ex-Circle mage free for the first time, I was promised a story, a drink, and a grope.”

“Get a room,” Victoria grumbled at them as they passed her pen, and Hawke snorted with amusement. Drake was still sleeping soundly as they passed him.

“We’ll see what we can do,” Hawke said, and grinned. “You know what, I think it’ll be interesting flying with you, Anders.”

Anders brushed their upper arms together, already feeling lighter around the shoulders. His months spent on the _Blackmarsh_ , shackled and watched, were falling behind him; ahead of him he saw the sky, and it was bright and empty, nothing but possibilities. “I’ll drink to that,” he agreed.

Maybe he might stay a little longer. For Justice’s sake, of course, not for any other reason. He’d see. He had the choice, after all; and that was, at the end of all things, all he’d ever wanted.

-fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone: for a franchise named Dragon Age, it's a bit light on dragons
> 
> Me, typing furiously at 3am: I AM ON IT


	10. Vengeance Is A Dish Best Served Petty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Vengeance Is A Dish Best Served Petty" (Canon-compliant (...ish), Hawke vs Knight-Commander)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tumblr ask meme prompt, 'Hawke + Meredith: passive-aggression'.
> 
> Me: _YES_.
> 
> The handers in this one is mostly background, I'm afraid to say, but I imagine Anders is very proud of his lover all the same.

The first time Hawke encountered Meredith's secret weakness, it had been entirely by accident. 

Meredith had summoned him for one of her weekly fate-of-the-city meetings, and Hawke had rolled out of bed and pulled on the first warm things he could find. It was a very nippy winter, and he hadn’t realised until the boat ride over to the Gallows that he had ended up with mismatching gloves and the most cheerfully hideous mustard-yellow scarf, hand-knitted with love but sadly not much taste by Aveline herself. He hadn’t thought anything would come of it until he had stepped into Meredith’s office, and she had looked up from the paperwork she was pretending to read - in an incredibly transparent intimidation tactic, all the more so because she used it so frequently - and flinched.

“That report’s upside down,” Hawke pointed out, because he really was just amazingly kind and helpful, and not at all experiencing a little bit of schadenfreude. “Either that or you need to fire whoever comes up with Templar ciphers, because really, you don’t need to be a devious maleficar to solve _that_ particular code.”

Meredith’s lips had pursed until they were practically invisible, and she’d assigned him to spend the rest of his day helping Knight-Captain Cullen look for apostates in the sewers. Hawke decided it was worth it for the flinch alone. Being both a mage and the city’s Champion was like being given a sword with no handle, and Meredith liked to make sure he knew it; wading through the sewers with only Cullen for company was the least of what she could make him do - all the more so since they turned up empty-handed and Cullen got some spider guts in that ridiculous bouffant of his, and that never failed to cheer him right up.

At the time, he didn't think much of it. Lots of people flinched when they saw him. Aveline said it was because the sight of him brought trouble like a shadow; Carver said it was his stupid-looking face. He didn’t draw the connection until a couple of weeks later, when he’d been summoned out of a rather merry birthday celebration in the Hanged Man on ‘urgent’ templar business. This time it was his ear-muffs that made Meredith blanch, and Hawke actually couldn’t blame her. They were from Isabela, so of _course_ they were lewd; where she’d found someone willing to crochet a pair of ear-muffs to resemble breasts was a mystery known only to Isabela, the breast-muff maker, and, presumably, Andraste.

“This is a serious matter, Champion,” Meredith said, with a face like a llama experiencing moderate to severe toothache, and then she sent him into Darktown with four clueless recruits and a Knight-Lieutenant named Bob to hunt down the Darktown Healer.

“You know, I think I get it now," Hawke said to himself thoughtfully, watching as Ser Bob thoroughly investigated the selection available from a pie cart in Lowtown. Their search for the Darktown Healer had been a bust, mostly because, Hawke knew, the Darktown Healer was actually still asleep in Hawke’s bed and would be until the early afternoon, having come home very late last night and fallen in next to Hawke still wearing his coat. 

One of the recruits scowled at him in disdain, attempting to scrape something sticky and worrisome off the side of his finely polished templar-issue boot with the sole of the other boot. "Get what, Serah?" 

All four recruits and Bob himself looked miserable, shivering in their cuiresses; Bob had a flimsy and not particularly suitable cap on over his bald pate. Not a one of them seemed to be wearing so much as a nice woolly scarf, let alone a pair of bespoke haute couture breast-muffs. Hawke rubbed his hands together - he was wearing lime green gloves today with pink flowers on the back, courtesy of Merrill - and beamed like a cat who had just knocked a priceless Antivan antique off the mantlepiece. "Meredith," he said, leaning toward the recruit, "hates _handicrafts_.” 

The recruit sneered at him like _he_ was the sticky worrisome thing on the lad's boot. “The Knight-Commander dislikes _untidy things_ ,” the kid replied with prim emphasis, before hopping over to a wall one-legged and attempting to smear the sticky substance off that way.

“Say what you like, these ear-muffs keep me warm,” Hawke called after him, and smirked the smirk of a man who held all the cards - (including but not limited to Mr Bun the Baker, whose gently smiling face in his hand had always led to him beating Carver at Happy Families, and, incidentally, ruined several Hawke family Satinalias. 

On his way home that day he made it a point to stop off at the Hanged Man, which was in the midst of its bi-weekly bar brawl. Isabela lifted her mug to him in a toast from near the bar when she saw him come in, and resumed hollering suggestions at the combatants, two sweaty ginger men with bloody noses, black eyes and fists like hams. Hawke put two fingers to his mouth and silenced the entire pub with one of his patented ear-splitting whistles, usually reserved for his dog and/or annoying Carver - or commanding his dog _to_ annoy Carver; he was a firm believer in efficiency.

It took some time for the brawl to come to an end, with one of the sweaty ginger fighters trapping the other one's head in his armpit until either suffocation or the smell did the trick; but eventually come to an end it did, to Isabela's obvious disappointment. Hawke only lowered his hand once he was certain he had the entire taproom’s attention. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, cheerful in the awkward hush, “I’ve got an odd request to make. Who here can knit?”

Five hands went up, and he nodded, once, to himself. “Alright,” he said, and grinned like a shark. “Now, for _twenty five sovereigns_ ,” he continued, speaking clearly and loudly, enjoying the rapt silence anyone mentioning such an obscene amount of money could command in a dump like the Hanged Man, “Who here would be willing to knit me an incredibly tasteless sweater, depicting a templar going at it doggy-style with a sheep? I’m asking for a friend.”

A forest of hands shot up this time, and Hawke put his hands on his hips and beamed. 

Sometimes, vengeance was petty, and that was _okay._


	11. Photogenic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Photogenic" (Modern!AU, art prompt)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to [another art piece](http://queen-schadenfreude.tumblr.com/post/127907940518/treat-yo-self-naps) by [queen-schadenfreude](http://queen-schadenfreude.tumblr.com) on tumblr, featuring handers napping! The piece is a) adorable and b) described in the text, so I'll spare you the lengthy transcription this time. Hope you enjoy! ;)

It is a photograph, of all things, that makes Anders realize he is in love with Hawke.

Evening at the Hanged Man, and Hawke has gotten up to purchase them another round; Anders finds himself watching the man make his way to the bar, smiling at the casual easy way he walks, the square of his shoulders and the sway in his hips as he evades the other patrons. It’s a good view, and it takes him a moment to catch Varric patiently calling his name, or what passes for it nowadays. “Earth to Blondie,” Varric says, and laughs when Anders glances at him.

“I think I own that album,” Isabela offers, grinning; she is toying with the paper umbrella from her last cocktail, spinning it between fingernails painted a bright and glossy purple. “By the Lovestruck Idiots?”

Anders flushes all the way to the tips of his ears, to his shame. Not for the first time, he curses his pale complexion. “I’m not - ”

“As I was ,” Varric interrupts mildly, “Have you seen that photo Merrill took of you and Hawke from last night?”

“She took photos of us?” Last night had been movie night, a weekly tradition; they’d watched Fenris’s pick first, _Zombie Chainsaw Hunt XV_ accompanied by the amount of wine necessary to watch something called _Zombie Chainsaw Hunt_ , XV or not; and then Aveline’s choice, some forgettable piece of fluff romcom that Anders knows he never made it through completely. Hawke had been sitting next to him on Merrill’s wide futon, sharing a faux-fur blanket in a fetchingly 80s leopard print and a bowl of microwave popcorn, and snarking about the plot in a low voice in Anders’s ear until his eyelids had drooped shut.

“She took photos of everybody,” Isabela says cheerfully. “They’re on her facebook, look for the album called Friendship Night. The cover photo is of Fenris giving her the finger.”

Anders frowns, his fingers nervously at play, tearing up an old bus ticket he found in his pocket. “Do I have to? I’m not photogenic.” Something about the camera always makes him look worn out, exhausted. His facebook profile picture is of Ser Pounce-a-lot, and he spends most of his time on the website carefully untagging himself from photos taken by his friends. He knows he’s a wreck, he doesn’t need evidence.

“Here,” Varric says, pulling his phone out from his pocket. “I think you’ll like this one.”

Anders admittedly isn’t one for phones. He has a pager, courtesy of work, and two shitty old flip-phones he inherited from his friends. Hawke promised him his smart phone when he upgrades contracts soon, but Anders isn’t usually that fussed. He leans forward over the table as Varric scrolls briefly through photos - Isabela hanging upside-down off the sofa, hair spread like an pool of ink over the floor, effortlessly glamorous; Varric in profile, halfway through pointing something out; even Aveline, watching the screen with huge eyes - and then them.

“ _Oh_ ,” Anders breathes.

He’s already asleep in the photo. Maybe that’s why he can stand to look at it. He still looks sort of ragged; his hair is slipping out of his ponytail, there are shadows under his eyes - but Hawke had been leaning on his shoulder before his eyes drifted shut, and Hawke is still there even after, his face pillowed on Anders’s chest and his arm gently draped over Anders’s other shoulder, fingers curled lax around nothing. His face is blissfully calm, and Anders feels something in him like a spark kindling, something floaty, something funny.

 _Good_ , he thinks, rather bizarrely, _I’m glad Hawke got some rest too. He’s needed it lately._

“I’ve captioned it ‘the tale of the hamster cheeks,’” Isabela says cheerfully, and after a moment Anders can see where she got that from; Hawke’s face, mashed against his chest, cheek spread fat.

“He looks fine,” Anders says automatically, taking the phone from Varric to admire the picture in detail. He has his arm around Hawke. When did that happen? Did he do that in his sleep? Did Hawke allow it, or was he also asleep when it happened? The spark in his chest burns brighter, dancing in his stomach; he feels cold between the shoulderblades, and he can feel that bloody blush creeping to the back of his neck. Unbidden he remembers their last group outing to the beach, Hawke cupping that selfsame spot carefully in his sunblock-laden palm, strong calloused fingers gentle around the back of Anders’s neck and the rough pad of his thumb brushing the top of his spine.

 _Careful_ , Hawke had said, _you always get sunburnt. Right here. I’ll get it for you._

Varric is still talking, but it hardly matters. All Anders has eyes for is Hawke. That, he realizes, has been true on a less literal level for the past three years now. “- didn’t want to wake you, you looked so comfortable, but you both owe us for hogging the futon all night. Isn’t that right, Hawke?”

“Absolutely,” Hawke says, setting down their drinks: three pints of beer and a coke, which Anders reaches for automatically. “You’re always right, Varric. There has, in fact, never been a right-er dwarf than you. Out of completely casual curiosity, and in no way related to the current conversation - what are you right about this time?”

“Not my order,” Varric says, poking the glass and wiping the condensation off onto the table. “Where’s my whiskey sour?”

“Yes,” says Isabela, her eyes gleaming the way they always do before she tells a joke. “And where… has my rum gone?”

“Getting flashbacks to my time in the service industry,” Hawke says, shuddering. “All complaints, no tip?”

“Pretty sure cock-ups like this are why you no longer work in the service industry, Hawke,” Varric says, chuckling, and Hawke laughs.

It’s a good laugh, Anders thinks, and looks back down at the photo on Varric’s phone; at the sheer comfort in their poses, the shape they make together. It looks… good. Photogenic. He takes a deep breath. “Thank you for the drink,” he says, catching and holding Hawke’s gaze.

Hawke smiles. His eyes are bright and familiar. _Maker’s fucking ballsack_ , Anders thinks, _we’re both idiots_. “You’re welcome,” Hawke says, and his voice is softer somehow than it is with Varric or Isabela, and they are _grown fucking men_. Anders has never been one to go at things half-arsed, unless it’s putting his trousers one leg on at a time, in which case he supposes he must be definition do things one arse-cheek at a time…

 _You’re rambling_ , he thinks, then realises: _no. You’re procrastinating._

He can recall one of his classes back at medical school, the visiting professor a wizened and unfamiliar woman standing proud at the front of the classroom; she’d talked about how sometimes they’d need to make a hard choice, how in emergency situations they needed to push ahead with any plan of action, because anything was better than inaction. _Do not hesitate to leap into the abyss_ , she’d said. _It is only when you fall that you learn whether you can fly._

The words had stuck with him, even though it had eventually turned out that the professor was no guest professor at all but instead a visiting alumni who had wandered into the lecture hall out of boredom. It’s been three years. He doesn’t remember how long he’s loved Hawke without knowing, but now he does know, and there’s no way to put that particular djinn back in the lamp.

“Hawke,” he says, “Can I talk to you for a moment? Outside?”

“Sure,” Hawke says, without hesitation. Isabela chuckles, low and dirty, and Varric rolls his eyes almost fondly. Anders’s heartbeat feels quicker, his pulse erratic, but he doesn’t feel scared. Just excited.

It’s been three years. It’s time to learn whether or not he can fly.


	12. A Storm of Righteous Thunder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A Storm of Righteous Thunder" (Canon-compliant, Varric's questionable writing)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a) the off-hand mention in the World of Thedas supplementary material that a critic in Antiva wrote a scathing review of Varric's DA2 novelization, commenting on the unlikelihood of Hawke assembling such a large group of weirdos as friends, and that Hawke _sent that critic a thank-you letter_ and b) [this gifset of purple!Hawke's](http://reikah.tumblr.com/post/122295297381) shitty (but surprisingly successful) smear-campaign against a particularly efficient templar during that one act 2 quest - you know the one - and mostly the presence of his party members standing right behind him, including but not limited to Varric's fucking _face_. As I said on tumblr:
> 
> "you know he had to change that shit for his book. like, in _tales of the champion_ , hawke finds real evidence of corruption after a long trawl through dark warehouses & interrupting eeeeeevil cultists at work, and then bursts into ser conrad’s trial just as he’s about to be declared innocent to hurl the evidence at the judge. “I, HAWKE, HAVE COME TO SEE JUSTICE DONE!” he bellows, flexing heroically as the jury swoon."

"That is not what happened,” Hawke says, frowning.

“That’s _exactly_ how I remember it happening,” Anders says, kissing Hawke’s hipbone, his stubble a scrape over Hawke’s bare skin. “Are you going to put the book down, love?”

“It is down,” Hawke says, settling one hand carefully amidst Anders’s hair, gathering it up in his palm. It feels coarser than it used to and a little greasy, but it’s still Anders. “Did you read the part where I, and I quote, 'take you like a storm of righteous thunder’ on the bench of the defense?”

Anders drags his tongue cat-rough over Hawke’s navel, eyes bright and amused. “Yes. I’ve always liked that part.”

“How did he even get this published? I mean, I read _Hard in Hightown_ , big boats and all, and that’s gold compared to this,” Hawke complains.

“It’s a million miles better than the tat that used to make illicit rounds of the circle,” Anders says. “Mind you, much as I criticize, I learned more about certain parts of the human body from those books than I ever did from the enchanters. Most of it turned out to be untrue, but it was an entertaining learning experience, at least.”

“So you’re responsible for this crease in the spine?” Hawke’s eyebrows draw together and he picks the book up to demonstrate; it falls open right at the part where Anders comes in from the rain, wild-eyed and shivering, for the very first time. “Three pages of purple-prose lovemaking - _lovemaking_ , Anders, he actually uses the word, for fuck’s sake - where we gaze soulfully and apparently 'nauseatingly’ into each other’s eyes. And then according to him, I offered you a sandwich!”

“Love,” Anders says. He’s given up on his attempted seduction, and simply lies comfortably between Hawke’s legs, shoulders against Hawke’s thighs and chin on Hawke’s stomach. “You _did_ offer me a sandwich. I was there, remember?”

Hawke flushes. “I did not.”

Anders laughs, kissing Hawke’s belly. “Yes, you did. It was a cheese sandwich, and you asked if I wanted the crusts cut off!”

“…. you were too thin,” Hawke mumbles sheepishly, and lets the book slam closed. “Besides, not everyone likes crusts!”

“Everyone in Darktown loves crusts.” Anders’s smile is slow and wistful and a little shy, like a rising sun, and Hawke loves it more than he can say. He cups Anders’s cheek in his palm, thumb resting over his bottom lip, and lets Varric’s questionable autobiography spill off his chest to land with a thud on the cave floor next to him.

“Maker,” he murmurs, “I love you,” and Anders pushes himself up and then they’re kissing, lazy and unhurried. Anders smells like a man in need of a bath, but so does Hawke. They’re dirty and unwashed and both a little on the thin side, and their feet ache from the walking and the running, and they’re a thousand miles from home and cheese sandwiches, crusts cut off or not; but they have each other, and they’re free, and Hawke knows deep in his bones that he’d do it all over again.

It’s too late and they’re too tired for anything strenuous, despite Anders’s efforts, and so when they break Hawke kisses Anders gently on the forehead and lets his head thump back against the folded pair of trousers he’s using as a pillow. Anders hums contentedly and settles down against his side, eyes drifting shut; he leaves a hand on Hawke’s bare chest, as if reassuring himself that Hawke still exists, even with his eyes closed.

“Apparently someone from Antiva hated it,” Hawke says, as their breathing starts to even out.

“Mmm,” Anders says.

“Said the book was unrealistic and the characters were unbelievable.”

“Hmmm,” Anders says.

“… think I should write them and let them know what I think?”

“Don’t start fights in Antiva,” Anders mumbles, soft and barely-audible. “And we can’t really afford the postage, love. Go to sleep. Stop worrying about it.”

Hawke sighs. “I’m not going to start a fight, but okay.”

Over by the cave mouth, the dog yawns; Hawke turns his head to bury his face in Anders’s hair, and listens for the sound of his breathing, the steady rise and fall. Anders is a heavy weight against him, numbing his arm, warm and alive, and Hawke wouldn’t trade this for the world. _We’ll be fugitives together_ , he said. He’s not sorry about that. He saw the Gallows, and he made his choice. Some things couldn’t be tolerated, by anyone with a scrap of sense: unforgivable things. Like the word _lovemaking_ being applied to Anders and himself in a mass-published book.

Anders stirs in his arms. “Hawke? Love?”

“Yeah?”

“When you go into town tomorrow to post your letter to Antiva -” and Hawke flushes; Anders knows him too well - “Can you look for the next installment?”


	13. A Match Made in Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A Match Made in Heaven" (Modern!AU, meet.... cute?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the best tumblr shitpost I've ever seen, literally 5 words long: "Imagine anders on a Vespa".

It’s the most beaten, broken-up Vespa ever, too, not even a new one. And even that might be okay - might be fine, even, if not for the helmet Anders wears while riding it.

Unfortunately, for every fashion disaster out there there’s a soulmate. The first time Hawke sees Anders - pulling into his parking spot outside the hospital, wearing natty bike leathers with fake feathers on the shoulders and the above helmet - he’s stunned. He grabs weakly for Fenris’s shirt with his free hand, stopping them both in their tracks. “Fenris,” he says, gesturing at Anders with the latte cup, “Do you see that?”

“Unfortunately,” Fenris agrees, looking like he encountered an unexpected lemon.

“That’s the man I’m going to marry,” Hawke sighs dreamily.

Fenris gives him a _look_. “We’re here for a blood test, not an eye test, Hawke,” he says, “Although if you want I suppose we can combine the two.”

Hawke pays him no attention. He’s already fantasizing about introducing the mysterious tiger-helmeted Vespa-riding doctor to his collection of dragon-themed kigurumis.

A match made in heaven, I guess.


	14. The Last Resort of Good Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The Last Resort of Good Men" (Canon-compliant, custom Hawke)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the following experimental screenshot my tumblr mutual daggerpen posted of her [Act 2 custom Hawke](http://daggerpen.tumblr.com/post/138907019671/me-just-now-wait-does-this-mean-i-can-me-i-can), a witty Chasind rogue named Gareth:
> 
> Whilst nudity is _always_ hilarious, it was the tag "#after three years hawke decided to ditch the subtlety" that made my _fucking day_. Go get 'em, tiger!

_What Anders was expecting:_

Gareth Hawke, Chasind smuggler and friend to more than one scared apostate, maybe armed with a basket of sandwiches. Concern masked with teasing; piercing eyes and a cocky grin, steady careful tread no surprise from a man built for stealth. Another visit, one of many, saturated with that quiet unspoken truth that lay between them like the Veil, both of them too scared to quite voice it. The brightest light in Kirkwall, wasting time in Darktown. Anders knew why. He just didn’t want to.

_What Hawke was expecting:_

Blushing. Averted eyes. A long speech about how they couldn’t, because Anders was dangerous. A three-year-ache over a three-year-hearthrob. A borrowed coat to go home with, and hopefully a kiss, a touch, something real and physical; something desperate and needing like Anders himself was desperate and needing and so obvious in his loneliness. More realistically, maybe an escort home, because Anders was interested, for all he said he wasn’t; hands that fluttered, wanting to touch, but not quite; _I’m dangerous_ , he’d say, like Hawke was born yesterday, like Gareth didn’t know that what Anders meant at the bottom of it all was a rather less imposing _I can’t lose you too._ Someone had to make the first move.

_What Anders got:_

**Abs.**

_What Hawke got:_

“… Abs,” Anders says.

“Hawke, actually,” Gareth says, standing a little straighter and trying to resist the urge to flex his pectoral muscles. That was always Carver’s trick, anyway.

Anders is staring, open-mouthed. “… I thought your tattoos went much further down than that,” he says.

“Spent a lot of time thinking about my tattoos?” Hawke asks.

That earns him a moment of eye contact. Just a moment, but there’s a smile playing at the edges of Anders’s mouth. “They’re rather striking,” Anders agrees.

“They start up again under the waistband,” Hawke counters cheerfully. “Want to see?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Anders says, with meaning, and then catches himself; he hesitates, visibly torn. Hawke knows enough to know this conflict is not so much between man and spirit as between man and circle mage.

“If it’s any help,” he says, cocking a hip against one of Anders’s cots and folding his arms over his chest, tensing his stomach muscles mostly to draw Anders’s attention back to his abs where it belongs, “I’ll tell Varric you were very noble. Tried to resist. "Don’t tempt me,” you said, “I’m still a man -”“

"Maker, Hawke, that doesn’t even sound like me,” Anders says, sounding dismayed.

Hawke grins. “Do you really want your reaction immortalized in print as ‘Abs’? Imagine the damage that could do to your reputation. It’d be tarnished irrevocably; forget Anders the Warden or the Darktown Healer or the Phenomenally Attractive,” and there’s the blush he hoped for, although it’s not much more than a faint dusting of pink to freckled cheekbones. “Anders the Abs mage.” He holds a finger up in the air, grinning with wild abandon as the thought occurs. “Or worse: _Abders_.”

Anders half-laughs, half-groans, which is exactly what he wants. “You’re terrible,” he says.

“I thought I was Abs,” Hawke retorts, and feels his mouth move in mirror image when Anders smiles. He steps closer, heartbeat quickening in his chest when Anders lets him; close enough to feel the whisper of Anders’s coat against his bare skin, the tickle of those ridiculous feather pauldrons against his sunburnt and freckled shoulders.

“Remind me to thank whoever told you to turn up in my clinic shirtless,” Anders tells him, and he’s lifting his hands, and despite himself Hawke can feel tension leaking into his muscles because they’re so _close_ and it’s been three years, and not even his usually cast-iron confidence is utterly unbreakable. “I mean, usually this sort of thing only happens in the Fade, and you’d be… less you.”

“I’m fairly sure I’m not in the Fade now,” Hawke says, leaning closer. Anders’s eyes are huge in the centre of his vision, the pupils wide and inky-black. “Touch wood. Uh, Warden’s honour, something something - oh, just hush,” and then he kisses Anders, drags their mouths together chapped and shy but ridiculously eager in a long-awaited meeting. Anders is still and unyielding at first, but Hawke tilts his head, slips a hand to his jaw and strokes his thumb around the scratchy-stubble-rough edge of Anders’s face; and it’s like he’s cast a spell all his own because Anders just melts against him, like a candle in the sun, lips opening for Hawke’s mouth and his palm settling with naked (heh) appreciation on Hawke’s bare chest and yes, _this_ , Hawke thinks, smugly, _finally_.

Someone had to make the first move, after all. If it took him turning up in Anders’s clinic with no shirt, then, well, it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make.

(Also, he’s going to have the remember that pun about 'naked appreciation’. Look, he never said he was perfect.)


	15. Cut Loose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Cut Loose" (Post-game, custom Hawke)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Hawke in this ficlet is my Leo Hawke, who has featured in two full-length fics - awkward romantic comedy [Bound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9726977), and the longer pre-DA:I fic [Through a Forest Wilderness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11079993). If you haven't read either of those stories, all that you need to know is that he's a red/aggressive mage!Hawke who sided with Anders, and his dog's name is Fang.
> 
> This story was inspired by a one word prompt, which was "haircut".

The first inn they stop at after Kirkwall, Anders takes to his hair with a pair of scissors and, after the last shaggy curl of red-blonde hair lands on the towel he set out for that purpose, a razor.

He’s never been bald before. After he nicks himself the third time - cursing under his breath as he soothes the cut closed with magic, and fingers sticky with his own blood - Leo takes over, obviously out of pity; Anders bends his head and closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing and not the scrape, scrape, scrape of the razorblade over skin newly and strangely naked.

Leo says, “I’d leave your beard to grow out, if I were you.”

“That was the plan,” Anders agrees. He can’t resist touching a portion of his scalp opposite where Hawke is working, feeling the smoothness of his bare head - or maybe that’s the foam. It feels strange.

He risks a glance up. Leo tightens his grip on Anders’s forehead, just enough to keep him from moving; his brow is furrowed in concentration. The razor scrapes though another pass. “You’re going to need a hood, too. It’s cold out there.”

“I was thinking something dashing, with feathers around the brim,” Anders says, and then regrets it. He feels different, now that it’s all over, Kirkwall still on the horizon billowing smoke like pus pouring from a lanced boil. Lighter. Looser. Like he’s not pushing that boulder up Sundermount anymore, waiting for it all to come crashing back down atop him.

Leo brings the razor down from the crown of his head. There’s smoke staining in his wolf’s fur mantle, and Fang is sacked out by the fireplace snoring his rumbling Mabari snore, and there are lines in his brow and greys in his beard that weren’t there this time yesterday, when the explosives were a potential and the rite of the annulment a hanging guillotine blade - and he looks tired. Older.

He’d looked like that for months, as the city fell apart. The centre could not hold, not forever. His hands on Anders’s skin are strong and firm, but not painfully so; and when he meets Anders’s gaze, his eyes are bright and alert.

“Maybe something simpler,” he says. And he’s looking at Anders with that same fondness he always has, the edge of his mouth turned up just so - like nothing’s changed, or like he expected this all along.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to reach up and set his hand over Leo’s, to still the movement of the razor blade; and then even easier than that to draw it close, press a kiss to Hawke’s scuffed knuckles. They both stink of smoke; Kirkwall’s burning on the horizon; there’s dried blood crumbling on his fingers - none of it matters.

“I love you,” Anders says.

Leo bends forward and kisses him on the forehead. The stubble of his upper lip tickles Anders’s scalp, like nothing he’s ever felt before. It doesn’t matter. Hair grows back. What he has with Leo, the future they’re trying to make - that’s more important.

Always has been.


	16. Heartsong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Heartsong" (Canon-compliant, post-game)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Hawke in this ficlet is my Leo Hawke, who has featured in two full-length fics - awkward romantic comedy [Bound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9726977), and the longer pre-DA:I fic [Through a Forest Wilderness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11079993). If you haven't read either of those stories, all that you need to know is that he's a red/aggressive mage!Hawke who sided with Anders, and his dog's name is Fang.

His mother had an old lute that she used to play by the fire, when the day drew to a close and the farm was aglow in that warm, lazy light like whiskey in the bottle. The wood was warped and the catgut was aged and the pegs never quite tuned properly, and she would make a face and complain about the quality of the sound after almost every verse - but still, she played it.

Hawke used to wonder what happened to it, in those early years when Kirkwall was a fresh start and not yet a prison, before the weight of it all began to bow his shoulders and crack his back. It probably went up with the rest of the farm; Leo can’t imagine the Darkspawn would have had much need for it. The music they love has no need for instruments.

Anders has an old lute too. He plays it by the fire as the days draw to a close and their campsites are dyed scarlet in that heavy, unforgiving light like the sky itself is burning. It’s aged and warped and out of tune, and two of the pegs are missing entirely, and Anders plays it without complaint about the quality of the sound because it’s always been a privilege, not a hobby. He doesn’t know how to use the pegs; he cannot mourn their loss. He doesn’t know any better. He’s never had another instrument.

Sometimes Hawke wonders if the songs Anders plays are real things, and not figments of his imagination; if they were written for mortal ears or for something else, something other. There’s too many things in Anders’s head to be sure - Darkspawn drums and lyrium, the Fade and the Taint striding in step through his soul like the ranks of an exalted march: the tune’s not one Hawke knows but then, well. He’s never been to the Anderfels. He’s still not entirely sure whether or not Anders has, either.

His mother used to play for them all, gathered around the fireplace of an evening; Anders glows while he plays, blue slithering through slender fingers plucking at fading toneless strings, and Hawke doesn’t know if Anders is playing for him or for the things in his head.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the songs are still songs regardless of who they’re for, the spirit in his head or the ancient gods in his blood or the lover sitting by the fire, watching him play with the red sun behind him. In this light his clothes are bleached bloody and in his bent head his eyes flash from human amber to spirit white, and he’s swallowed alive by his old black coat, the bones on his wrist stand out starkly; and the song he plucks out on his old lute is sombre, and slow, and so fucking sad that Hawke can _feel_ it, somewhere down deep in the pit of his heart where he’d felt the Chantry quaking, in that one singular moment in which Anders crossed the point of no return.

It’s not an unwelcome feeling. The songs Anders plays are new and rough and imperfect, not unlike the performer; and he might be the only person to hear them, here, alone, in the wilds - but that’s just fine with Hawke.

They’re beautiful, all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The alternate title for this ficlet is "the one where anders plays the lute very badly and hawke is too fucking lovestruck to even notice".


	17. Hearth and Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hearth and Home" (Canon-compliant, Act 2 handers)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt, "autumn".

Anders was born on a farm.

Not many people left alive remember that. Anders himself doesn’t tell people about it. What would be the point? He can’t go back to being that farmer’s lad anymore than he could cast off his magic and come out of it whole. Whoever he was before the barn burned, it has nothing to do with him now.

But.

The wind whistles high and sharp through the streets of Hightown, this close to the sea and this high up; and there’s very little room for vegetation in the stone alleyways and the great townhouses - but a little bit creeps through, here and there. Kitchen gardens for the slaves, now maintained by servants. A small row of weak, struggling trees planted by the Orlesian quarter. Windowboxes, thyme and basil grown fresh within the shelter of a Kirkwall mansion’s walls.

He’s in the study working on his latest manifesto when something small and red-gold blows in through the open window, lands atop his open book; it takes him a while to notice it. Hawke reaches over from his spot at Anders’s side - proof-reading his most recent draft, _did you know there’s no u in templar?_ and _that’s not how you spell ‘outrageous’_ \- and plucks it from the page, twirling it carefully between his forefinger and thumb. “Huh,” he says, “Haven’t seen one of those for a while.”

Anders takes it from him, turns it over in his hand. It’s stained a little with wet ink, here and there, and it’s smudged the manifesto, turned the words of the second paragraph into a thin smear of bleak blackness; he rubs his thumb along the length of it, feels the texture against his fingers. “Sycamore,” he says, and with a flick of his wrist, sends it whirling through the air; it spirals, as the seeds eventually do, and comes to rest on the carpet.

They used to have a sycamore tree near the western pasture, he remembers. The sheep liked its broad crown for the shade, and he had liked to sit there after the day’s work was over, one of the barn cats draped across his lap purring softly, watching the seeds spin their way down graceful and free.

“Must’ve come from one of the neighbours,” Hawke says. He picks the seed up again, placing it carefully on the desk next to Anders’s inkwell; when Anders glances over he’s watching the seed with a soft look to his eyes. They’re a common Fereldan tree, sprouting up across the bannorn, and as the seasons change and the seeds fall they come alive in a riot of colour.

Aveline once asked him what he thought of Kirkwall - how it compared to her home country. She had been trying to find some middle ground, some kinship in patriotism; Anders can’t remember what he said but knows it was probably petty. He was born on a farm in the Bannorn, but they took him away and labelled him the Ander like a banner - the outsider, the halfblood kid with his northern nose - and whatever love he had had for his country had bled away a long time ago, replaced by a sense of intrusion.

A reminder that he did not belong, not anywhere, not so long as the magic flowed through his veins.

Leaving Ferelden, he hadn’t looked back. Kirkwall was as good a place to be as any other. He felt no particular sense of belonging no matter where he traveled - forever an outsider, forever stateless. Vengeance, it seemed to him, upon magekind by the Chantry, for the sins of the Magisters. _None to return to the lands of their mothers. By cruel magic taken, ice, lightning, and flame._

He doesn’t miss Ferelden. He doesn’t miss the farm. But sometimes, he thinks, as he carefully places his quill back in the inkpot - reaches for a fresh page, placing aside the ruined sheet with its smudged second paragraph - sometimes he does miss the sycamore trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line about "cruel magic taken" was taken from the wiki entry for the Chant of Light - in canon it's from a series of verses about Andraste's armies dying at the gates of Minrathous. Possibly this was intentional. (It wasn't)


	18. Armoire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Armoire" (Slight canon divergence)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tumblr post [[here]](http://reikah.tumblr.com/post/161253084421/calligraphypenn-its-my-favorite-picture-of-all), featuring Anders, modded to wear Malcolm Hawke's mercenary leathers from the Mage Item Pack, and the following tags from tumblr user De Carabas: "#can’t decide#is he borrowing hawke’s clothes or have they started wearing matching couples outfits "
> 
> My response? The former, imo!

Hawke stowed his father’s old armour away when he acquired the mysterious robes from the bone pit dragon - heavily enchanted, reeking of power, and with a gorget thick enough to mean business; it was an outfit fit for a champion. The old armour was getting a bit thread-worn anyway, around the elbows and the collar; dismantling the spiked Chantry sunburst pauldron had taken a toll on the seams.

Anders found it in one of the spare rooms at the Hawke estate. heavy with metal - greaves, pauldrons, the chainmail lining the inside; even the boots were weighted with knee guards. Grounding. Hhe says he wears it for the smell of Hawke, which still lingers in the thick wool collar, the greasy tips of the gloves, the worn down sash; but the truth is, it sounds like Hawke, too.

Every mage leaves a mark on the world in the things they handle. This suit of armour saw Hawke through the challenging of an Arishok and the fight for a city; he fought templars in it, and demons, and common street thugs all three with the same focus and determination, that drive to _do right by someone_. He wore it down in the deep roads, back when it still had that hateful Chantry sunburst on the shoulder and it was the only sun they had seen for weeks; he wore it through the sniffing out of corruption in the templar order and the eradication of slavers; he’s cast magic in it, he’s been wounded in it, he’s stood in Anders’s clinic and been kissed in it, and all these things have left their mark.

Like Aura’s wedding band, but these memories aren’t a puzzle. Anders, whoever he is now, _what_ ever he is now, doesn’t have to work backwards to find their meaning in the memories singing through the lyrium stitching. The memories are in the meaning.

He was there for every cut and scrape; he was by Hawke’s side for every spell, every school Hawke ever cast; he healed the wounds and kissed the man and watched Hawke chip that sunburst off by hand himself, and every inch of the fabric across his skin sends little bursts of memory through him like a childhood lullaby, an old song never quite forgotten.

Some days he forgets where the line is. Some days he feels too big for his skin, like he’s bursting out of it, and the cracks spidering along his knuckles are nothing but a symptom; other days there’s sela petrae under his fingernails and all he can think about is sulphur and blue fire, _you will never take another mage_. Some days Varric talks to him and he can’t remember which _him_ he needs to be, to put his friend at ease - but then Anders turns his head, or raises his arm; and the fabric whispers, soft and sweet, an old song in his ear - of fire and smoke; of clinic kisses and Malcolm Hawke’s magic; of the thudding of his heart in his chest and the rushing of his blood in his ears, and he knows.

He knows.


	19. Gathering Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Gathering Down" (Canon-compliant, pre-slash, in between Acts 1 and 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the tumblr prompt "I just had to see you".

It was raining up above. Anders could hear it through the gaps in the clinic walls, the steady rushing noise as water poured down the cliffside from the bridges and statues and rocky crags that made up Hightown’s bedrock, and as soon as it began he had gone to the old sea-chest with its broken hinge in which he kept all his personal belongings in search of his fire rune stash.

There were only a handful left, somewhere in the bottom of the chest beneath all the junk he kept hold of - joining amulets and scraps of fabric, warden-blue; an old pillow, embroidery worn thin and discoloured with use; spare feathers and smooth stones, for the holding; a thread from a magic robe, lyrium-bright and soothing; oddly carved little wooden figurines Hawke gave him, found on the brigands they vanquished and perfect for a fretful child looking for something real, something tangible it could hold and examine as he examined it. There had been some change in the trunk, at one point, and a gold hoop earring and spare belt buckles - not to mention two brooches, with the griffon rampant - but this was Darktown, and they had all long since vanished.

He didn’t mind. He hadn’t needed them, not really - just thought he had, with the same part of him that had kept the pillow and the fox pendant and all sorts of things. Not because they were in and of themselves valuable, but for the memories they held.

The fire runes were tucked inside a knot of badly torn trousers he had been planning to take for bandages. There were only three left; he carefully eased out a single one and, cupping it gingerly in the palm of his hand, straightened up. The refugees in the clinic watched him, some in silence, some talking to their neighbours; gossip, he had learned, was a universal constant. All of them fell silent when he tossed the fire rune into the empty firepit and it caught alight with an audible _whoosh_ , a bright, cheery and smokeless flame.

The first time he had done that, they had fled - to a man, his clinic deserted within five minutes. He had been so sure that the templars would come knocking that he had sat there, in the empty centre of his empty clinic, holding his staff in a white-knuckled grip and waiting, for nearly half a day. In the end the knock on his door had come not from a band of armoured hunters but instead from a teenage mother with a colicky baby and far too little flesh on her bones. Now one of the children ran to warm her hands by the fire with a glad shriek, her torn tunic obviously doing too little to warm her by itself.

“Careful,” Anders said to her, “It might be magic but it’s still very hot.”

“That’s the _point_ ,” she said, fingers spread and bathed in orange. He hid his grin in his feather pauldron, masking it by turning his head, and went and fetched the cauldron.

Once the clinic was settled - those who could gathered around the fire, one of his Ostagar veterans stirring a cauldron of elfroot-laced turnip stew - Anders did the rounds. While some refugees - usually miners, fresh from the bone pit - presented with devastating injuries, and chokedamp was always a risk here, most of the refugees awaiting treatment today were only lightly wounded or ill - scratches, a couple gashes, some minor chest colds that nevertheless needed seeing to before they worsened. In Darktown a chest cold could become pneumonia within an hour, day like this. The sun was well and truly hidden, and when Anders poked his head out through one of the holes in the wall, to retrieve a bucket he’d left gathering the water running down the cliffside, the sky was steel-grey and just as imposing.

They were supposed to be meeting at the Hanged Man later that afternoon. Hawke had heard a rumour about a new gang stirring in the wake of the Sharps’ collapse, from his mystery contact out back of the tavern, and Anders had agreed to help him hunt down the source. Varric had invited himself along, mostly, he said, out of a sense of curiosity, and Hawke had cajoled Isabela into agreeing to asist them chiefly because she said had nothing else to do until the evening crowd walked through the Hanged Man’s door, coins in hand.

(At least, that was what she _said_. Anders suspected it had something to do with some mass brawl Hawke had assisted her with yesterday down in the docks, on the path of her mystery relic. Isabela had an odd sense of honour, no matter how much she claimed she didn't.)

The clinic wasn’t the busiest it had ever been but it was steady. The fire rune burned for two hours; when it expired Anders threw in another one, aware of the drumbeat of the rain outside, falling if anything harder still. Anders kept an ear out for the Chantry bell ringing the hour, marking the time until he was supposed to meet Hawke - if the clinic was too busy he usually asked one of the healed refugees to take a message, and most were willing to do it for a few coppers, provided by Anders’s share of whatever job Hawke had taken him on last.

By the time the bells rang the fourteenth hour, the flow of refugees had begun to slow, and with them the rain - or maybe it was the other way around. Anders had cured the better part of a dozen cases of wetlung, several infected, unpleasant gashes, and had two old men stretched out on cots with poultices on their various arthritic body parts, chattering to each other in the fashion of elders everywhere about how the Dragon Age was the worst Age they had experienced, and how much better things had been back in their boyhoods. The children were still clustered around the fire, warm and holding various bowls of watered-down turnip stew, listening to a young minstrel with two broken fingers (now healed, and straight and true at that - he would play again) leading them in a rousing rendition of Andraste’s Mabari while they petted the real mabari that lay in their midst -

Anders paused, his hands wrapped around a mostly-clean cloth, back still bent over his last patient, and narrowed his eyes. The mabari was sprawled on its side, head on its paws, a tattered old shawl draped over its thick neck like a necktie; its ears flickered back and forth as the children bawled the chorus with more enthusiasm than skill. “And there’s Andraste’s Mabari, by the Holy Prophet’s side -”

“Never really mastered that song,” Hawke said lightly, from behind him. Anders, who had suspected it was coming, still had to clamp down on the urge to jump. He finished wiping his hands off on the rag and set it carefully aside, atop a crate; the woman whose gout he’d been seeing-to hobbled off the table with a thanks and headed straight for the turnip stew.

Anders turned around. Hawke was leaning on a different crate, elbows resting hard against the wood; his chin was resting on the back of his hand. He wore his father’s old black mercenary leathers today, which served to streamline his broad figure, but had carefully eschewed the golden sunburst insignia normally present on the breast. Practical, in a Darktown hypervigilent of Templar patrols. He smiled at Anders by way of greeting, and Anders found himself smiling back, despite becoming keenly aware of the sweat that had his shirt clinging to his back, his hair loose and fluffy and half-falling out of its tail where he had dragged his nails through it across the span of the afternoon.

Part of him wanted, rather desperately, to find a mirror and tidy up - for silk robes that showed off his lovely collarbones, the hoop earring that accentuated the line of his jaw and changed the shape of his face; the fox pendant that displayed his throat to its best advantage. It was not a big part. Instead he tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear and nodded at the caterwauling refugees, who had now reached the part of the song about Maferath attempting to lure the dog away. “Not terribly Fereldan of you.”

Hawke grinned. It made the crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes wrinkle deeper, and made Anders smile, too. “True,” he allowed. “Carver performs it better than I expected. I think the soldiers at Ostagar taught him. Probably used him as a lodestone in battle - when the blood’s splashing everywhere and bodyparts are sailing through the air, just listen for Carver Hawke, bellowing out the Fereldan national anthem as he chops up people with a huge fucking sword.”

Anders cocked his head. “Has he written?”

Hawke pulled a face, pained, and Anders regretted asking. “Not yet. Although I suppose he has other matters to attend to, nowadays, than the family that inconvenienced him so.”

“It’s a lot to take in,” Anders agreed. “My first few days as a Warden were… chaotic.”

Mostly because the keep had been on fire, or Darkspawn had been tunneling up from the cellar, or a thief who swore a blood-oath against Commander Cousland’s life had been apprehended raiding the antiques. And even when there were no outside influences, the nightmares and the appetite had been an education in and of themselves. Cousland had warned him of both, of course, but Anders never really had listened to anything anyone claiming to be an authority figure said, not since Irving had told him earnestly that Karl might be gone from Kinloch but Anders could always write him, and that was more than most got, so really, he should be _grateful_.

“It was kind of Stroud to write, at least,” Hawke said, straightening up. “I just wish he’d addressed the letter to anyone other than ‘the Amell family’. Now mother knows that Carver survived his joining ritual or whatever it is the Wardens put their recruits through she’s doubled down on her efforts to get the estate back. It’s like she thinks the Wardens will just - send him on back home or what-have-you if she can secure us the estate and me the title.”

Anders let the corner of his mouth quirk. “Whereas if Stroud had written you directly, you wouldn’t have passed on the news?”

“Noooo,” Hawke allowed, drawing the word out to two thoughtful syllables, “But I would have broken the news… tactfully. I’m no Lord Amell, that’s for sure.”

“Not even if it keeps the Templars at bay?”

“… Point,” Hawke conceded, grudgingly. “I’d hope it doesn’t come that far. I prefer the relative anonymity of being Hawke. Lord Amell sounds like someone whose idea of slumming it involves visiting Lowtown with a retinue of only five body servants, he doesn’t sound like someone who’d venture as far as _Darktown_.”

“Lord Amell sounds sensible, if you ask me” Anders said tartly, only partially teasing. “Sensible enough to keep away from apostasy when he’s already under suspicion.”

Hawke winked at him. “What, so quick to be rid of me? Anders, you wound me - ”

Anders scowled in response. “The templars will do _worse_ ,” he said, venomously.

Hawke didn’t say anything immediately. The children had finished Andraste’s Mabari, and were rewarded with a light smattering of applause from the gathered refugees; the mabari barked once, joyfully. Hawke studied Anders carefully, his eyes sharp and piercing and his mouth set in that strangely stubborn way it had, the way it had when Hawke had faced down Ketojam’s keeper or slit Gascard DuPuis’ throat; a man who acted soft only to keep people from noticing the knife until too late.

It was an act Anders was intimately familiar with, an act not unknown to the man whose belongings still remained in the old worn-down sea chest with its one broken hinge.

The children moved onto a different song, still led by the minstrel and fueled by free turnip stew. Hawke reached out and touched Anders’s wrist, just over his bracer, with three fingers; Anders imagined he could feel the roughness of Hawke’s finger-pads even through the leather. “I wanted to see you,” Hawke said, “It was raining and I thought you might need a hand, and if I - if I let the Templars get in the way of that, then… I might as well go for a Lay-brother in the Chantry. Not like I’d get to do anything else fun either.”

Anders knew what he meant. Hawke had been born free, raised free, in a family that understood magic - but his father and sister were gone now, and all that was left was a world that kept its mages against their will in a former slave prison, and refused to consider the irony.

A long time ago Anders had earned his golden hoop earring from the potions he had made, potions that the Circle had sold; Irving had presented it to him with ceremony, as if the reward of a golden earring was sufficient compensation for his lack of choice. Lord Amell might have more freedom on paper, but not if it was a lie. Anders understood. He touched the back of Hawke’s hand, gently, where it still rested against his wrist, and they exchanged a glance full of meaning in the way of apostates everywhere; fellows in loneliness in a way few could understand.

It had been three months since the Deep Roads. The thing between he and Hawke felt more and more natural by day, and he knew he should be careful but…

Well. Nothing about his plan to bring down the Chantry, to right the wrongs it inflicted upon the innocent, called for caution. He turned and, beckoning Hawke follow him with a jerk of his head, made his way to his fabrics crate. “Since Lord Amell is not here, and Hawke is - and early, at that, for our afternoon crime patrol - Hawke can make himself useful and help me make some bandages.”

Hawke slid his belt knife free. It was a new one, fine worked steel with a handle wrapped in red silk ribbon; there was a… channel cut the length of the blade, presumably to allow it to pierce flesh easier. Deep Roads spoils, perhaps, Anders thought, and slipped his own knife free of its sheath, offering it to Hawke worn leather hilt first; Hawke accepted it without taking his eyes off Anders’s own. Their fingers brushed, but there was no electric spark - just a deep pool of warmth in the pit of Anders’s belly that grew only hotter. “You know how to show me a good time,” Hawke said, cracking the lid off the crate with a practiced gesture.

“There’s always the _deep_ sewers, you know,” Anders said, grinning, as he pushed that wayward strand of hair behind his ear again. “I’m always in need of herbs…”

“Bandages suit me just fine, actually,” Hawke said hastily. He winked at Anders, who smiled back. “D'you think we should be able to make it to the Hanged Man for the meeting hour?”

“I don’t see why not,” Anders said, thoughtfully. He reached into the crate and picked out the first item in it - a holed and badly damaged pair of trousers, from some Lowtown barrel or another. “The rain’s stopping. I’ll extinguish the lantern at five bells, barring any sudden arrivals.”

“Fine,” said Hawke, accepting the trousers. He folded them over in his hands and clumsily began to pick them apart at the seams using the tip of Anders’s dagger, and Anders watched him do it for just a heartbeat too long. Hawke glanced up and grinned at him, that flash of crow’s feet again, and Anders looked away.

“I’m glad that you’re here,” he said, softly despite the clinic noise, the rousing sing-a-long by the fire. It didn’t matter if Hawke heard the words. He knew he carried his heart on his sleeve and his emotions on his face. Sometimes he remembered the person he had been, before he was Justice, and it was like remembering a long-ago meeting with a stranger; how easily that man had lied, even to himself… No.

Hawke bumped their shoulders together companionably. That warm place inside Anders’s chest hummed. “Well, there wasn’t a lot else to do, with the rain,” he said lightly, and Anders heard, in that apostate tongue, _There’s no place I’d rather be_.

Anders smiled, more to himself than anyone else. A woman entered the clinic with an old shawl around her shoulders, coughing into her fist, and he nodded acknowledgement at her. “Thank you,” he said, to Hawke, and he meant it in all the ways he could.

As he made his way through his last few patients he was keenly aware of Hawke’s presence, always somewhere behind him; the sound of cloth ripping, the singing of the children as they finished their second song and proceeded onto a third, a lively Fereldan tavern song - the way the patients muttered. Hawke might consider himself anonymous still but not among the refugees, who knew his face and knew his reputation; the Fereldan made big, the man who had helped them where he could, who was changing the Bone Pit; the man about to come into a not-insignificant amount of money. They knew what he was. They hadn’t told on him, either - because of the healing they received and the magic that gave them fire without fuel, because of the spells the two of them cast and who they chose to cast them on, and sometimes…

Sometimes little things like that gave Anders hope.

There had been a man with a golden earring and a fox pendant, who owned things now kept in an old sea-chest with a broken hinge; and he was gone now, but in his wake he had left something else. Something warm, despite the rain.

Hawke had showed him that, this free mage with his sharp knife’s core and his apostate’s secret smiles; had held up a mirror so that Anders could see himself, and Anders knew, despite the loss of the golden earring and the old fox pendant, despite the hair hanging out of his ponytail and the bags around his eyes, that he wouldn’t change it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> (NB: I'm always open for prompts (although no guarantees on speed) - so if you'd like to send me a request, pop a note in [my tumblr askbox](http://fauxfires.tumblr.com/ask)! Anonymous submissions open. Thanks for your time!)


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